ACADEMIC FREEDOM AND THE COLD WAR: THE DISMISSAL OF BARROWS DUNHAM FROM TEMPLE UNIVERSITY, A CASE STUDY

Barrows Dunham, professor and chairman of the Department of Philosophy at Temple University, was dismissed by the board of trustees in 1953 after his invocation of the Fifth Amendment before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Dunham, author of Man Against Myth in 1947, had been a member of the Communist party from 1938 until 1945. This detailed case study of Dunham's dismissal demonstrates how, in the face of relentless outside pressures, the leadership of the academy and the academic profession excluded members of the Communist party and uncooperative congressional witnesses from holding faculty positions in American colleges and universities during the Cold War.; Heretofore unavailable sources were used in order to complete this study. Oral history interviews were conducted with over seventy persons and the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) released over 600 pages of Dunham's dossier dating from 1942 through the 1960s. Temple University permitted access to the minutes of its board of trustees and the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) released materials relating to the censure of Temple University in 1956. Papers of the Temple chapter of the AAUP shed new light on some of the internal problems of this organization during the Cold War period.; The dissertation begins with an introductory chapter on the history of political repression in the United States from 1919-1952 with special emphasis on repression in education. The Pennsylvania Loyalty Act, passed in 1951, is the subject of Chapter II. This chapter provides the reader with a detailed examination of those forces which supported and opposed the passage of the act as well as showing how the law affected the state-aided colleges and universities in Pennsylvania.; The next two chapters concentrate on Dunham's educational background, his intellectual and political shift to socialism and the Communist party in the 1930s and the continuing surveillance of Dunham by the FBI. These chapters also give an account of how Cold War repression comes to the Temple campus in 1947 and how left-wing student politics was attacked by the administration of Temple University. Chapter V shows that the FBI supplied the Governor of Pennsylvania and the administration of Temple University with information from Dunham's dossier that was used to suspend him after his refusal to cooperate with HUAC. Unable to dismiss Dunham under provisions of the loyalty act, the board of trustees, after a faculty-administration loyalty hearing, discharged Dunham for his alleged improper use of the Fifth Amendment.; The last two chapters of the case study portray the willingness of the faculty of Temple University to acquiesce in Dunham's dismissal and lay bare the futile attempt of the AAUP to bring meaningful sanctions against the administration of Temple University. Despite Dunham's acquittal of contempt of Congress in 1954, the faculty refused to fight for his reinstatement and the censure action by the AAUP did nothing to restore Dunham to the academic profession and posed no serious threat to the administration of Temple University.; The inability of the academy and the academic profession to protect Dunham was but one example of how academic freedom was redefined during the Cold War. Under intense political pressure orchestrated by the FBI in conjunction with HUAC and the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, the leadership of Temple University and the leadership of the academic profession redefined academic freedom to exclude political dissenters from holding faculty position in American colleges and universities.