Resisting McCarthyism

"Of the sixty-nine professors fired nationwide for political reasons during the McCarthy Era, nearly half were from the University of California. A small band of men and women at California's Berkeley and Los Angeles campuses defied the stranglehold of McCarthyism in a refusal to sign the non-communist loyalty oath required by the institution. While college professors across the nation meekly acquiesced to non-communist oaths in order to keep their jobs, this group of "nonsigners" resisted in defense of free speech. Revisiting a controversy considered one of the most important crises ever…