Academic freedom and the occupation of Germany and Japan

Abstract

In the years 1948-54, New York University suffered an anticommunist “purge” of its faculty which was extreme even in its day. That the “McCarthyite” period at NYU was so vicious is at first puzzling. National hysteria about atomic secrets notwithstanding, it remains true that some universities with greater prestige (and hence seemingly of greater political importance) and others with more conservative administrations stopped far short of the suspension of academic freedom experienced at Washington Square and University Heights. Further, the “purges” seem to have been the product of a minority movement of anticommunist activists, and not a rebellion on the part of libertarian-minded faculty or students. A politically conformist and usually passive campus had to be convinced of the need for an ideological crusade.