The story of McCarthyism's traumatic impact on government employees and Hollywood screenwriters during the 1950s is all too familiar, but what happened on college and university campuses during this period is barely known. No Ivory Tower recounts the previously untold story of how the anti-Communist furor affected the nation's college teachers, administrators, trustees, and students. As Ellen Schrecker shows, the hundreds of professors who were called before HUAC and otehr committees confronted the same dilemma most other witnesses had faced. They had to decide whether to cooperate with the committees and "name names" or to refuse such cooperation and risk losing their jobs. Drawing on heretofore untouched archives and dozens of eprsonal interviews, Schrecker re-creates the climate of fear that pervaded American campuses and made the nation's educational leaders worry about Communist subversion as well as about the damage that unfriendly witnesses might do to the reputations of their institutions. Noting that faculty members who failed to cooperate with congressional committees were usually fired even if they had tenure, Schrecker shows that these firings took place everywhere--at Ivy League universities, large state schools and small private colleges. The presence of an unofficial but effective blacklist, she reveals, meant that most of these unfrocked professors were unable to find regular college teaching jobs in the U.S. until the 1960s, after the McCarthyist furor had begun to subside. No Ivory Tower offers new perspectives on McCarthyism as a political movement and helps to explain how that movement, which many people even then saw as a betrayal of this nation's most cherished ideals, gained so much power.

No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities

Schrecker, Ellen W.

History

Oxford University Press

Ellen Schrecker's award-winning and highly-acclaimed No Ivory Tower recounts the previously untold story of how the anti-Communist furor during the 1950's affected the nation's colleges and universities. She describes how the hundreds of professors called before the investigating committees of the McCarthy era confronted the same dilemma most other witnesses had to face, deciding whether to cooperate with the committees and "name names" or to refuse such cooperation and risk losing their jobs. Drawing on previously untouched archives and dozens of personal interviews, Schrecker re-creates the climate of fear that pervaded American campuses, as the nation's educational leaders responded to the national obsession with Communism as well as their own fears about the damage that notoriety might do to the reputations of their institutions. As a result, firings occurred everywhere--at Ivy League universities, large state schools and small private colleges--and the presence of an unofficial but effective blacklist meant that most of these unfrocked professors could not find regular college teaching jobs in the U.S. until well after the McCarthyist furor had begun to subside in the 1960s. No Ivory Tower helps to explain how the McCarthyism, which many people even then saw as a betrayal of this nation's most cherished ideals, gained so much power.

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