Thought Police

Thought Police

In 1954, at the height of a period of anticommunist sentiment in the United States, the University of Michigan held a board of inquiry to investigate the political beliefs of three of its teachers. The three had been called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC), and all had refused to answer questions related to their membership in or knowledge of the American Communist Party. H. Chandler Davis, an Instructor in Mathematics, also refused to answer the University Committee's questions, and was dismissed. Clement L Markert, Assistant Professor of Zoology, chose to cooperate with the University's board of inquiry, and was reinstated, with a letter of censure inserted in his personnel file. Mark Nickerson, Associate Professor of Pharmacology, also chose to cooperate, but was nevertheless dismissed . The University of Michigan, in effect, fired two of its faculty because they kept their political views to themselves.

To render the University's decision so simply, however, is unfair. The teachers were fired when they failed to agree (or to agree strongly enough) with the prevailing political philosophy, at a time when disagreement with that philosophy was deemed to be dangerous (how otherwise can the existence of the HUAC be interpreted?) to public safety. And, regardless of how real or imminent a danger their silence can now be determined to have been, the fact is that, at the time, the danger was believed to be real, and the response to it was arguably justifiable. For it can be argued that the University of Michigan--an institution created and supported by the government of the State of Michigan--was justified in revoking its sanction from employees who had failed to assist efforts to marginalize a philosophy demanding (so it was feared) the destruction of the government (and, therefore, of the University itself). That this argument was justifiable is powerfully indicative of the mood of the nation at the time: a mood that had, by 1954, become so powerful as to spur the exercise of administrative authority throughout the country in the effort to alleviate a pervasive fear. M.J. Heale succinctly