Chandler Davis on loyalty oaths

Chandler Davis
From Wikipedia

The first substantive blogpost I made talked about the use of loyalty oaths at US universities in the 1950s with a view towards Abigail Thompson's editorial in the Notices of the AMS.  I tried to use the blogpost as an opportunity to visit loyalty oaths in South Carolina, and I tried to avoid offering personal opinions about Thompson's editorial.  (I wasn't entirely successful: I corrected some errors in a later blogpost.)

While hopefully not expressed in the blogpost, my personal opinion at the time was that Thompson's editorial was badly thought out and offensive.  She compares the current use of diversity statements in hiring to the use of loyalty oaths asserting non-membership in the Communist Party USA during the 1950s Red Scare.  During the Red Scare, professors who were refused to sign loyalty statements were questioned by investigative committee, fired from their jobs, and even, in some cases, sent to jail.  I was tempted to write that Thompson's remarks were really disrespectful to those people.

Whelp, I was wrong.  Totally wrong.  Remember the series of blogposts on Governor Timmerman's attacks on faculty at Benedict and Allen?  Two of the faculty members in question were the parents of  Chandler Davis.  Chandler Davis himself refuse to cooperate with the House Unamerican Activities Committee and ended up losing his position at the University of Michigan and served 6 months in a federal prison.

Why do I mention him?  He signed his name to one of the letters in support of Abigail Thompson!

Chandler Davis's signature to the Letter to the Editor in support of Abigail Thompson

I guess I was totally wrong about Thompson's editorial being disrespectful to victims of the Red Scare since one of the victims is openly supportive of her....

You can read the full letter here on page 9.