D
EAR X: With your permission, I should like to give you my thoughts about the investigation of Communism in the universities that is currently being conducted by the House Un-American Activities Committee and the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. I do so because I have watched these committees in action for a long time, and because I believe this investigation is in a sense a test case of whether Harvard is still Harvard.
Let me begin by saying that I have been profoundly and actively anti-Communist all my life. Those of us who have always understood the Communist Party and its purposes perhaps do not feel called upon to protest our hatred quite so hysterically as those on whom the truth has dawned more recently. But the feeling is as strong just the same. Nor do I stop at being anti-Communist. I have known only three or four men and women who have emerged from the experience of party membership as well people. With these rare exceptions ex-Communists seem to me suspect and repellent, whether they are professionally and loudly repentant or merely mumbling and regretful. I am sure that all the other members of the Harvard governing bodies feel just as I do.
Unfortunately, however, the question that confronts us is not how we feel about Communists and ex-Communists. The question is, rather, how we feel about the three great principles which have run, like threads of gold, through the long, proud Harvard story. These are the necessary rules of association, as it were, of every free intellectual community — of every university that still fulfills the university’s function of extending the frontiers of human thought and human knowledge.
These rules are needful for a simple, practical reason. The frontiers of thought and knowledge are rarely pushed outwards without giving acute pain to those who are used to the frontiers where they are. People will always acquire a vested interest in the old boundaries. They will always feel, about any great extension, as our New England Federalists felt about the westward course of American empire. Hence a university cannot do its vital job if what is novel and original and unconventional may be punished as being immoral or pernicious or wickedly unorthodox. From Roger Bacon to Darwin, from Cimabue to Picasso, the grand originators have always been attacked as sinister subverters of the established order. The fear of such attack is a dead hand. And any academic community will degenerate into a mere finishing school for mediocrities unless the members of that community feel free to think new thoughts and say new things.
Among the three principles of academic freedom, the first, then, is simply the freedom to make the personal choices, within the limits of the law.
Harvard’s governing bodies may, of course, refuse to appoint a man because they do not like the tendency of his politics or even the cut of his coat. But if he is once appointed, and if he duly fulfills his academic contract, a member of our faculty is not to be penalized for any legal choice he may make, however eccentric or controversial. He may become a nudist or a Zoroastrian, imitate Origen or adopt the Pythagorean rules of diet. If called before a Congressional investigating committee, he may seek the protection of the Fifth Amendment, and refuse to testify on grounds of possible self-incrimination. However much we disapprove, we may not interfere.
I am aware that many people nowadays hold that any man who shelters behind the Fifth Amendment must by inference be criminally guilty. I myself believe that witnesses called before the Congressional investigating committees choose better when they testify fully and frankly, letting the chips fall where they may. But I am also quite certain that seeking the Fifth Amendment’s protection is a permissible choice, within the limits of the principle I have laid down above.
In the first place, the procedures of these Congressional investigating committees are an outrage against the spirit of the Constitution, whether or no they remain within the letter of the Congressional power, which I doubt. One of them — that headed by Senator McCarthy — is in effect engaged in the national dissemination of poison pen letters. Another — that headed by Senator Jenner — long cherished and flattered as its chief witness a man I myself have publicly accused as a probable perjurer, whose sworn testimony in the important case of John Carter Vincent has just been scornfully rejected by the present Secretary of State. Still another — that headed by Representative Velde — until lately employed in a key position on its staff a proven forger of evidence, who was only dismissed when caught, in flagrante delicto, in a second shameless fabrication.
Before these committees, a man may be charged with “pro-Communism” because he has irritated a neurotic subordinate by editing out a foolish repetition of the phrase “anti-Communist” in a single paragraph of a broadcast. If he seeks to answer the charge, the committee staff blackmails him with threats of rough treatment on the stand. If he still persists, he is barely allowed to make his halting explanation before he is overwhelmed with menacing irrelevancies — “Come now, was it five minutes before or five minutes after? — You’re under oath; was it Friday or Saturday? — Won’t you admit that this word ‘democratic,’ which you say you used, is a prime favorite of the Communists?” And in the end the damning charge of pro-Communism remains on his record, grossly false yet inexpugnable, to return to haunt him whenever he seeks a new job, or moves to a new neighborhood, or makes a new friend.
The foregoing actual case, which I can vouch for in detail, points all too clearly to the central fact. Both in procedure and in aim these committees differ altogether from the old House Un-American Activities Committee when Vice-President Richard Nixon was taking a leading part in its work. The real aim of these committees is not to bring persons guilty of crime before courts of law. It is to make political capital by incriminating their victims before the court of public opinion — to use the headlines to damage reputations beyond subsequent repair. Quite often, what is incriminating before these committees to the extent of ruining men’s lives would be rejected with indignation by any court in the country. The process is antilegal in its essence, and even doubtfully constitutional in its outward forms. In considering this process, it is ridiculously unrealistic to be guided by pure legal theory, in the manner of Professor Zechariah Chafee, Jr., and Professor Arthur Sutherland.
For these reasons, then, a Harvard faculty member called before these committees must be permitted to choose not to testify, either as protest against the prevailing procedures, or because he fears his simplest word will be ruthlessly twisted against him, or because he does not wish to play the part of an informer.
This last motive is an especially strong one. In the American academic community, there must be hundreds of unimpeachably loyal Americans who briefly wandered into the Communist Party during the united front nonsense of the thirties or the period of wartime silliness. In all too many of our universities nowadays, the mere revelation of these people’s former folly will cost them their posts. As I have said already, I think that in general the better course is full disclosure and let the chips fall where they may. But may not a man balk at ruining the lives of friends now loyal, who shared his own past error?
The witness who gives up the Fifth Amendment’s protection, tells his own story fully, yet refuses to inform on his friends, will certainly be cited for contempt of Congress. A jail term is the price of this seemingly more honorable course. Names and more names are what these committees want at this stage, and they will stop at nothing to get them. This is an essential part of their program for terrorizing the academic community.
I am fully conscious that a man who pleads possible self-incrimination in order to avoid playing informer without going to jail, is in fact taking advantage of a legal technicality. But even otherworldly legal theorists like Professors Sutherland and Chafee must admit that taking advantage of legal technicalities is common practice among respectable citizens. It is common practice, moreover, in the courts of law, where an accused man still enjoys his constitutional privilege of being assumed innocent until proven guilty. Think it over. I put it to you, whatever we may think ourselves, Harvard cannot say to members of the Harvard faculty, “Either you turn informer or you go to jail.”
As to the second principle of academic freedom, it is unrestricted freedom of thought.
Freedom of thought perforce includes the freedom to hold unpopular or pernicious political views, and even to belong to plainly pernicious political parties, so long as these parties are legal, as the Communist Party still is. I would not knowingly give a Communist a Harvard appointment, and I would be very suspicious of ex-Communists. But whether we like it or not, we cannot start disciplining a man for his political ideas after we have appointed him. The rule was well laid down by Senator Taft, who said he would not dismiss a professor just because he was a Communist, although he would do so if the man had broken his academic contract by teaching Communism on university time.
If I may, I shall illustrate the wisdom of this rule from my own experience. Immediately after the war, the American Communist Party was a serious threat. Infiltration had gone so far in the labor movement, for instance, that the Wisconsin CIO was actually Communist-controlled. The Wisconsin Communists were even able to swing the labor vote from Senator Robert M. La Follette, Jr., to Senator Joseph R. McCarthy, thus giving Senator McCarthy his majority in the 1946 Republican primary. Senator McCarthy was then complacent, defending his tainted victory with the remark, “Well, Communists vote, don’t they?” But at that time, as my writing will show, I was not complacent about the Communist threat, doing all in my power to expose and warn against this infiltration that Senator McCarthy benefited from.
Nowadays, while the menace of the Soviet Union has grown very greatly, the American Communist Party is an impotent wreck. But we are now faced with a new internal threat, from Senator McCarthy and his friends and followers of the neo-Fascist right. In my opinion, these people are also subversives in the literal sense, for they are seeking to subvert our most honored American institutions under the cloak of anti-Communism. If Communists are to be dismissed from Harvard, then it will also be my duty as an overseer to demand the rooting out of all McCarthyites and McCarthy fellow travelers.
It is precisely because any kind of purge opens the gate to all kinds of purge, that freedom of thought necessarily means the freedom to think bad thoughts as well as good.
It is Harvard’s glory — it always has been Harvard’s glory — to stand for unrestricted free trade in ideas. I am not impressed by the argument that Harvard should change her ancient ways, in order to give a safe answer to those who ask, “But are you going to let a Communist teach our boys?” Parents may choose from the wide variety of finishing schools for mediocrities if they think their boys are so softheaded as to be led into Communism by an astronomer or theoretical physicist mournfully parroting the dreary intellectual stereotypes of the extreme left. Harvard is not for the softheads, but for those capable of education. And to cut off that free trade in ideas which is a vital element in the highest education is no safeguard of those who come to Harvard to be educated. It is a sin against them.
But, you may ask, what if one of these men called by the Congressional inquisitors has been or is criminally guilty? What if we are not dealing with a mere party front-man, useful as window dressing, but with a conscious member of the Communist conspiracy? I am not such an innocent as to deny there may be such cases. Yet the third great principle of academic freedom is to leave such determinations to the due process of the law, of whose protection no American may be rightfully deprived.
There is no Harvard precedent for any other course. Dr. Webster (as I remember very well, for he was a relative of mine) murdered Professor Parkman and incinerated the body in the Harvard Physics Laboratory furnace. The Harvard President of those days testified as a character witness at Dr. Webster’s trial; and the hangman, not the governing bodies, terminated Dr. Webster’s appointment. I may be old-fashioned, but I still think homicide is as reprehensible as Communism; and I am contented to leave the discovery of conspirators to the police and the courts.
Nor can I forget, in this connection, the distinguished example set by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles in the grave case of Alger Hiss. I need hardly remind you that when Hiss was charged with perjury, and by implication with treason, Secretary Dulles and his colleagues on the Carnegie Institution Board refused to dismiss Hiss from his high post until the wrongdoer had been fairly tried. I honor them for their courage and right thinking. It would be inexpressibly shocking if the governing bodies of Harvard, which in the past have been courageous, right-thinking, and worthy of honor, should now forget their traditions in favor of a cheap and self-defeating expediency.
Let me repeat, in these cases the individuals are nothing and the principles are everything. I dislike the individuals, I deplore their views, and I wish they held no Harvard appointments. But this is irrelevant to the central issue. That issue is simple. Harvard has been asked to be the judas goat, leading the whole American academic community to the slaughterhouse. Harvard cannot be untrue to her past, cast shame upon her present, and jeopardize her future, by accepting this plausible but sinister invitation.
JOSEPH ALSOP