Top New York Times Editor: Ban Communists as Teachers
Speaking to an audience of school teachers, John B. Oakes, an editor with The New York Times, said that Communists should not be allowed to teach in the public schools. The teachers applauded.
Oakes went even further, arguing that anyone who took the Fifth Amendment about his or her Communist Party membership before a legislative investigating committee should also not be allowed to teach. “No Communist can have an open mind,” he declared. The talk was part of the ninth annual in-service learning for public school teachers. The liberal New York Times generally opposed much of the Cold War anti-Communist hysteria, but clearly this top editor drew the line on Communists as teachers.
Because many people called before HUAC or other investigating committees took the Fifth Amendment rather than answer questions about the political associations, a national controversy erupted in 1954 over “Fifth Amendment Communists.”
Learn more about the Cold War: Ellen Schrecker, Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (1998)
Watch a debate over academic freedom: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qCjuu6n6wqU
Learn more about the ACLU in the Cold War and other Times of National Crisis: https://www.aclu.org/aclu-history-rooting-out-subversives-paranoia-and-patriotism-mccarthy-era