Subversives, Squeaky Wheels, and “Special Obligations”: Threats to Academic Freedom, 1890–1960

Ellen Schrecker Subversives, Squeaky Wheels, and “Special Obligations”: Threats to Academic Freedom, 18901960 TENURE DID NOT PROTECT THE THREE PROFESSORS THAT THE UNIVERSITY o f Washington fired in the beginning of 1949. Even though there were no complaints about their research or teaching, because of their connections to communism, they were, the university’s president explained, “incompetent, intellectually dishonest, and derelict in their duty to find and teach the truth” (Countryman, 1951: 265). Two of the men were Communists—and had publicly admitted it—but the other, a social psychologist named Ralph Gundlach, was not. He denied it repeatedly and even sued the university’s president and won a retrac­ tion. He was, however, a political activist, who had joined more leftwing organizations than anyone else on the Seattle campus and may just have been too ornery for such a disciplined outfit as the American Communist Party (CP). Ralph Gundlach, in other words, was a squeaky wheel—and had been for years. On the Washington faculty since 1927, he was a prolific scholar and so well respected within his field that he became president of the Western Psychological Association the year he was dismissed. But he had only been promoted to associate profes­ sor after the chair of his department wheeled a shopping cart into the social research Vol 76 : No 2 : Summer 2009 513 president’s office, full of Gundlach’s writings and references to them in the works of other psychologists (Gundlach, 1962). As a scholar-activist, Gundlach believed in applying his psycho­ logical knowledge to real world problems and did not hide his own views in class. This did not win him support—either from his colleagues or his students. Some undergraduates were so outraged by his lectures that they actually complained to the president about “his ranting and raving for the overthrow of the United States government” (Thompson, 1997). He had also gotten into a conflict with the administration over his use of what were seen to be overly partisan questionnaires. One set, which polled members of the press about the area’s politicians, was then used by a local congressman in his 1946 reelection campaign; another asked about anti-Semitisrn; and yet another was related to labor issues. For the dean of the faculty, Edwin Guthrie, a psycholo­ gist himself, these questionnaires were “political,” which deprived them “of all possibility of being accepted as a scientific piece of work” (Countryman, 1951: 228-29). Still, despite his run-ins with the adm inistration, Gundlach would have remained on the W ashington faculty had he not been called before the state legislature’s Fact-Finding Com m ittee on Un-American Activities in the summer of 1948. The com m ittee’s chair, an ambitious form er deputy sheriff and first-term legislator named Albert Canwell, was determined to root out all vestiges of radicalism from the state. Since conservatives had long considered the university a nest of subversion, it was clear that Canwell’s investigation would reach the campus. Even before the com m ittee’s formation, the univer­ sity’s president, Raymond Allen, had warned those professors who were Communists “to get off the faculty . . . before they were smoked out.” He promised Canwell his cooperation and, at a special faculty meeting before the hearings began, told the prospective witnesses to brief him about their political activities. Once Canwell’s subpoenas reached the campus—and there were at least a dozen—Allen called in six of the future witnesses and asked them if they were Communists. Most denied it. Gundlach, however, refused to respond. “No one,” he 514 social research explained, “could prove that I was and I could not prove that I was not” (Countryman, 1951: 222, 228, 231). He was no more accommodating before the Canwell committee, refusing to answer its questions about his political activities. The univer­ sity responded at once. Publicly insisting that the school would “observe to the letter the due processes that are precious . . . to our academic traditions,” President Allen asked a special committee appointed by the faculty senate to authorize action against six faculty members. Three of those professors—Joseph Butterworth, Herbert Phillips, and Gundlach—had defied Canwell; the...