The Struggle for Free Speech at CCNY, 1931-42
Wolran Kim (Nov 2010)
What is the political and social position of college students in our society? What are their needs, if they demonstrate in the streets without studying in classroom? The commonness of the student movement of 1980s was to protest against imperialism, consumer society, gender discrimination, ethnic discrimination, etc. From Indonesia to the United States, young people of today have a common interest, struggling for education, culture, and the future. Many periods of American history have evaluated young people as being explicit disillusioned. This reflection has made hundreds of youth organizations over several decades.
For example, the Young Communist League worked in the youth sector for the organization trade union movement of industrial mass production workers, in the 1920s and 30s. The American Youth for Democracy group mobilized young people in the struggle against fascism and defended four kinds of freedom talked about by Franklin D. Roosevelt (freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from desire, and freedom from fear) in the 1940s. After this, the Southern Negro Youth Congress and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee fought against legal discrimination. Each of these organizations was made for a special appeal to serious problems of that era. The organizations disbanded after they resolved such problems, but their potential is much more widespread today. All of the revolutionary American movements, including the youth movement, were led by the socially disadvantaged. They are trying to create other institutions based on human values.
Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, and through the history of Patriot Act, the social concern of faculty and students about campus autonomy and freedom of speech is growing increasingly due to the Government’s monitoring actions. It is worthy that we re-engrave the various events of the CCNY (City College of New York: the oldest of all CUNY colleges) of the 1930s' social and economic crisis with the concept of freedom and civil liberties. CCNY's faculty and students protested against militarism and Civil rights violations, as these were spread throughout the country. City College faculty also participated in anti-fascist organizations and formed the College Teachers Union (a predecessor of today’s faculty union); they also established a City College unit of the U.S. Communist Party. Mainstream newspapers at the time, opposed to such campus-based activism, labeled City College “The Little Red School House.” Students were suspended or expelled and their organizations and publications banned. Faculty members were denied reappointment and those who refused to cooperate with the Rapp-Coudert Committee (1940-42)--a New York state legislative committee created to investigate “Communist subversion” in the city’s public schools and colleges--were ultimately dismissed from their jobs.
The Rapp-Coudert investigations and the subsequent Board of Higher Education trials lead to the dismissal, non-reappointment or resignation of over fifty faculty and staff at CCNY-the largest political purge of a faculty in the history of the US. CCNY lost many excellent teachers, and they most never worked in academia again. The purge ended when the US entered World War II as an ally of the Soviet Union in the fight against fascism. The techniques pioneered by the Rapp-Coudert Committee -- private interrogations, followed by public hearings for those individuals named by the committee's "friendly" witnesses -- became the model for the McCarthy investigations of the 1950s. Abraham Edel, of the Struggle for Academic Democracy, described that this investigation, which was part of the history of the early 1940s in New York, was a dress rehearsal for the McCarthyism of the 1950s on the national scene (1990).
Today's youth movement could be extended much more broadly and have more impact than before. The influence would be leading history if they know clearly where the communities are facing. Today, the American student movement is indispensable in the world's youth movement which is a part of the general protest in the capitalist system. This is the reason that youth movement should be wider and the college’s effort to be democratic is important.
Wolran Kim (Nov 2010)
What is the political and social position of college students in our society? What are their needs, if they demonstrate in the streets without studying in classroom? The commonness of the student movement of 1980s was to protest against imperialism, consumer society, gender discrimination, ethnic discrimination, etc. From Indonesia to the United States, young people of today have a common interest, struggling for education, culture, and the future. Many periods of American history have evaluated young people as being explicit disillusioned. This reflection has made hundreds of youth organizations over several decades.
For example, the Young Communist League worked in the youth sector for the organization trade union movement of industrial mass production workers, in the 1920s and 30s. The American Youth for Democracy group mobilized young people in the struggle against fascism and defended four kinds of freedom talked about by Franklin D. Roosevelt (freedom of speech, freedom of religion, freedom from desire, and freedom from fear) in the 1940s. After this, the Southern Negro Youth Congress and the Student Nonviolent Coordinating Committee fought against legal discrimination. Each of these organizations was made for a special appeal to serious problems of that era. The organizations disbanded after they resolved such problems, but their potential is much more widespread today. All of the revolutionary American movements, including the youth movement, were led by the socially disadvantaged. They are trying to create other institutions based on human values.
Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, and through the history of Patriot Act, the social concern of faculty and students about campus autonomy and freedom of speech is growing increasingly due to the Government’s monitoring actions. It is worthy that we re-engrave the various events of the CCNY (City College of New York: the oldest of all CUNY colleges) of the 1930s' social and economic crisis with the concept of freedom and civil liberties. CCNY's faculty and students protested against militarism and Civil rights violations, as these were spread throughout the country. City College faculty also participated in anti-fascist organizations and formed the College Teachers Union (a predecessor of today’s faculty union); they also established a City College unit of the U.S. Communist Party. Mainstream newspapers at the time, opposed to such campus-based activism, labeled City College “The Little Red School House.” Students were suspended or expelled and their organizations and publications banned. Faculty members were denied reappointment and those who refused to cooperate with the Rapp-Coudert Committee (1940-42)--a New York state legislative committee created to investigate “Communist subversion” in the city’s public schools and colleges--were ultimately dismissed from their jobs.
The Rapp-Coudert investigations and the subsequent Board of Higher Education trials lead to the dismissal, non-reappointment or resignation of over fifty faculty and staff at CCNY-the largest political purge of a faculty in the history of the US. CCNY lost many excellent teachers, and they most never worked in academia again. The purge ended when the US entered World War II as an ally of the Soviet Union in the fight against fascism. The techniques pioneered by the Rapp-Coudert Committee -- private interrogations, followed by public hearings for those individuals named by the committee's "friendly" witnesses -- became the model for the McCarthy investigations of the 1950s. Abraham Edel, of the Struggle for Academic Democracy, described that this investigation, which was part of the history of the early 1940s in New York, was a dress rehearsal for the McCarthyism of the 1950s on the national scene (1990).
Today's youth movement could be extended much more broadly and have more impact than before. The influence would be leading history if they know clearly where the communities are facing. Today, the American student movement is indispensable in the world's youth movement which is a part of the general protest in the capitalist system. This is the reason that youth movement should be wider and the college’s effort to be democratic is important.