Constructing a Culture

McCarthyism in Education

The Communist witch hunt started in the U.S. government by Senator Joseph McCarthy had leaked into all levels of American education by the early 1950s. It was only natural for the red scare to cause paranoia of educators including teachers and librarians because according to Eugenia Kaledin, they were “considered dangerous influences on the general public, [and] were singled out for special scrutiny.”[1] Educators who were believed to be Communist sympathizers or have affiliations with Communists were interrogated at all levels by deans and school boards and all educators were also encouraged to “name names.” This paranoia had a real effect as it is believed that approximately 600 teachers in the U.S. lost their jobs due to McCarthyism in education.[2]

The Case of Professor Burgum

The film “Freedom to Learn” featured in this project portrays a veteran high school teacher, Mrs. Orin, who is called in front of the school board after a parent discovers that she had been teaching her social studies class about Communism. What Mrs. Orin experiences in this film is a representation of what real educators went through during the McCarthy period. One prominent case of a teacher losing his job due to McCarthyism is that of professor Edwin Berry Burgum.

Burgum was an Associate Professor of English at New York University and he was dismissed from his job in 1953 after facing a committee that accused him of teaching Communism.
 
[1] Eugenia Kaledin, Daily Life in the United States, 1940-1959: Shifting Worlds (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 2000), 78.
[2] Stephen H. Aby, “Discretion Over Valor: The AAUP During the McCarthy Years,” American Educational History Journal 36 (2009): 122.

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