The Freedom Not to Speak

 “The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis – McCarthyism, Communism and the Myth of Academic Freedom,” by Steve Batterson, 2023

If you don't know it by now, 'academic freedom' is not an eternal principle, but the consequence of a relation of political forces. The recent resignations of two top University presidents, especially Haitian-born Claudine Gay at Harvard, tells you what is coming. The Far Right's plan for the U.S. is to completely take over the electoral system through gerrymandering and voter suppression; the legal system through judge appointments; the federal government through abolishing, weakening or staffing it with unqualified henchmen; purging the educational system of leftish teachers, profs and material; forcing the bourgeois media to kowtow to their 'reality' and the holy grail, seizing full control of the police and the military. (Project 2025).  “Diversity, equity and inclusion” (DEI) programs at capitalist firms are also in their sights. 

 Their present model is not full-frontal fascism but an authoritarian-nationalist model similar to Hungary's Orban, Russia's Putin or Turkey's Erdogan, among others. 'Voting' still exists in this context, the fig-leaf of 'democracy' still abides, but under massive constraints which nullify any definition of democracy.

Of course if they don't get their way, the violence and guns come out.

This is not to say that Democratic Party-style limited bourgeois democracy is actually democratic either. Nor was Gay an adroit anti-racist and pro-Free Speech advocate or Harvard a citadel of progress. Au contraire! Neither advocates universal social benefits either.  Nor was it sensible for Gay to even appear before the clowns in Congress.  But that is another subject. This is all part of a faction fight between different wings of the capitalist class, and indirectly an attack on labor. This faction fight is resulting in violence and a schism, based on the different corporate profit bases of the Parties. Meanwhile...

This story, about a professor who was a former member of the Communist Party (CP), is a cautionary tale on how to deal with academic repression. 'Woke' or 'cultural Marxism' is now seemingly the new Communism. U.S. capital has moved on from its optimistic heyday in the 1950s to a somewhat down-beat future. Conditions do not repeat so this purge might be much worse in the long run. The target of Harvard billionaires like Bill Ackman is not just pro-Palestinian sentiment or sloppy pro-Palestinian slogans but 'critical race theory,' trans ideology, DEI, humanism, actual history, 'p.c.' positions, affirmative action, environmental science, 'cultural Marxism,' the liberal arts and any socialist profs they can find. After all, nearly every U.S. University is really run by donors, corporate interests, administrators, political appointees and businessmen. That is where the present power resides.

Chandler Davis

Davis, who became a mathematician, grew up as a red-diaper baby surrounded by CP culture and people. He was in and out of the Party, supporting its goals of combating racism, being for 'peace,' backing labor unions and supporting free speech. None of this really relates to 'overthrowing capitalism' as was alleged. He was friendly with other leftists, including Trotskyists. He finally landed at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor as a Ph.D. math instructor and there he came to the attention of the FBI and HUAC. Earlier he had a applied for a position involving 'quantum mechanics' which relates to nuclear research. He had also supported the right of Communists to speak on campus, though banned by the administration. The book describes all the twists and turns of his case, along with what happened to others at Michigan.

Now oddly HUAC - the House on Un-American Activities Committee - was first set up under the sainted FDR in 1938, originally called the Dies Committee.  This is the same FDR the CP almost uncritically supported! Chandler faced several basic options re HUAC and the University's own investigation: 1, Talk, name names and issue a mea culpa; 2, Take the 5^th against self-incrimination; 3, Claim freedom of speech and freedom not to talk, i.e. take the 1^st Amendment; 4. Claim the right of privacy and allege that HUAC had no authority to expose his personal life; 5, Say nothing; 6, Make political speeches and denounce the Committee.

Anti-HUAC protest in San Francisco

The Plan

Chandler chose #3, seeking to challenge the process in court on 1^st amendment grounds, with a goal of appealing to the Supreme Court. This 'first amendment' slant seems to be the author's main interest. The benefit of blabbing is keeping your job, keeping out of jail and avoiding the black list. The benefit of taking the 5^th is that you stay out of jail but you lose your job. Taking the 1^st would lead to job loss and a conviction, but 'might' narrowly succeed if appealed. The privacy claim vs. HUAC 'exposure' was less iffy. Chandler wanted to make HUAC's position illegal using the 1st. Yet the Hollywood 10 made this argument under different facts and lost. Not talking, making political speeches or attacking the panel were, in the '50s, a direct path to jail. In the '60s that was the path taken by the Maoist Progressive Labor with no real consequences.

The focus here is academia. At Michigan grad students who were rumored to be in the CP, or used to be, were immediately dismissed, as were assistant professors without tenure. One tenured associate prof was retained due to his answers, another dismissed because he would not abandon socialist ideas. Chandler was fired after refusing to answer substantive questions. He claimed he did not support 'violent revolution,' that he supported free speech and that he had never pressured a student to join any organization. The ad Hoc Michigan U panel didn't care about any of this, as their guidance from the administration and a conservative body of academics was that present or former membership in the CP was, ipso facto, grounds for dismissal. Membership in the CP meant to them that Chandler was an agent of a foreign power; a potentially violent terrorist favoring illegal means and also pro-dictatorship. Instead he was really a mild-mannered reformer. So he was terminated.

The AAUP of the time stood up for Chandler and against the flawed process at Michigan, but that made no difference. Batterson makes clear that it was not HUAC but the University administration that led the charge against the grad students, instructor, assistant and associate professors. Congressional Rep. Elise Stefanik, our little Ms. McCarthy, had no power to terminate Gay either, but the Harvard Corporation did. Things don't change much. Chandler went on an academic blacklist and could not find an academic position in the U.S. Quite like Professor Norman Finkelstein, who was pushed out of DePaul University in 2007 for being anti-Zionist and ended up teaching for a time in Turkey.

Batterson tracks the legal maneuvers that got Chandler a 26-count conviction for refusing to answer questions before HUAC. It wound its way from a federal district court in 1956 to the federal appeals court, then was appealed to the Supreme Court. Other cases also found their way through the system. An earlier one based on privacy and the authority of HUAC, not 1^st amendment rights, was denied by the D.C. Circuit but upheld by Warren's Supreme Court. The Supreme Court denied McCarthyism in several other cases, including one related to Paul Sweezy, editor of Monthly Review. These decisions were possible good news for Chandler. Each case was marked by various factual and legal differences however.

Batterson looks at the various judicial philosophies on the Supreme Court - Frankfurter's 'judicial restraint,' Warren's 'ethical Constitutionalism'; Black's 'liberal originalism. It didn't matter in the end. A hearing on Chandler's 1^st Amendment case was denied by the Supreme Court in late 1959 and he spent 6 months in jail in Danbury, CT. Chandler then went on to a distinguished math career in Canada where he got a tenured position. There were apologies from the University of Michigan in the 1990s, but none from the Board of Regents. So all's well that end's well, I guess. Overall this book shows the variegated justice dished out by the bourgeois courts and system, which eventually moved against McCarthy. Would that still be true today? That is the problem the newer, rabid capitalists are trying to solve.

Now I don't know why this book was written, due to the volume of McCarthyism books, but it might be one of the few on academe. Lawyers and academics might find it interesting and readable, but for anyone else, it's not. Its value is that tenure, academic quality and free speech don't matter if they are coming after you. If you are associated with 'terrorism' in any way, hold an opinion that is deemed against university policy or government policy, act 'unpatriotic' or refuse to cooperate, you will be a target. This is the profile of many college defenders of Palestinian rights or those in academe who are anti-Zionist, support a democratic 'one-state' solution or a revolutionary proletarian solution to the Israel / Palestine question.

Prior blog reviews on this subject, use blog search box, upper left, to investigate our 17 year archive, using these terms: “Folk Singers and the Bureau” and “Whole World in an Uproar” (both by Leonard); “You Say You Want a Revolution?” “Democracy Incorporated” (Wolin); “A Confederacy of Dunces,” “Oppenheimer,” “I Married a Communist” (Roth), “The University in Chains” (Giroux) or 'college' or 'university.'

And I bought it at May Day Books!

Red Frog, January 8, 2024