Oscar Shaftel and the Menace of McCarthyism

Expulsion

In 1952, a liberal dean of students at Queens College, Harold Lenz, was removed because of pressure from local patriotic groups. Queens students who protested Lenz’s firing were threatened with suspension. A few months later, Professor Vera Shlakman (Economics) and then Professor Oscar Shaftel (English) were fired when they took the Fifth Amendment before congressional investigating committees. They were both highly regarded teachers and scholars who were officers in the teachers’ union. Two years later, a popular Polish instructor, Dudley Straus, was also fired for taking the Fifth. All three had tenure and were never charged with misusing their classrooms. Untenured faculty members with the wrong politics simply were not rehired. Prominent professors, unhappy with their repressive atmosphere at Queens College, left for positions elsewhere.

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