McCarthyism in Education
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.