Fund for the Republic to Support Studies of Cold War Impact on Civil Liberties
The Fund for the Republic, established with a large grant from the Ford Foundation, announced on this day that it would commission studies of U.S. Cold War policies on “individual freedom and traditional concepts of civil liberty.”
The studies would focus on three issues: the impact of the draft, the effect of measures to control sedition and subversion, and the growth of government secrecy and counter-intelligence agencies.
One of the most notable reports commissioned by the Fund was a two-part Report on Blacklisting in the news and entertainment industries on July 1, 1956.
Learn about the history of the Fund: Thomas C. Reeves, Freedom and the Foundation: The Fund for the Republic in the Era of McCarthyism (1969)
Read more about the Cold War: Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (1998)
Learn more: Larry Ceplair, Anti-Communism in the Twentieth Century America: A Critical History (2011)
See the great movie about blacklisting, Joe McCarthy, and Edward R. Murrow: Good Night and Good Luck (2005)