Within the United States, the southern strategy of Massive Resistance to federally mandatedr acial desegregationh ad its origins in 1948, a year which saw the confirmation of Cold War hostilities in Europe. As a result, the dialogue surrounding matters of race was infused with Cold War rhetoric. Between 1950 and 1954, Wisconsin Senator Joseph McCarthy added to this milieu, reinvigorating anticommunism and red-baiting as political weapons. Allied to the traditional southern fear of "outsiders," many southerns egregationists seized upon anti-communism as a weapon to undermine opponents promoting change to the region's racial status quo. This thesis, however, challenges the notion that all segregationists used anticommunism against all integrationists at all times. Rather, anti-communism could be a subtle, flexible political tool which individuals and groups tailored to suit their own needs. At times, it was used to rebuff specific civil rights campaigns, activists and organisations. At others, it was used sparingly. One of the main tenets of this thesis is that, hitherto, segregationists have commonly been treated in rather one-dimensional terms by historians of the civil rights movement. By examining their diverse responses to anti-communism and wider Cold War anxieties, it is argued that they were not the homogeneous political group that many have suggested, but in many ways were as resourceful and pragmatic as those they opposed in the civil rights movement. This thesis also examines some apparent anomalies in the uses of anticommunism and Cold War rhetoric. Opponents of segregation berated segregationists for undermining America's attempts to court newly independent, post-colonial states in the Caribbean, Asia and Africa. No predominately non-white country, they argued, would align with the US-dominated West rather than the Soviet East with such blatant racism endemic in the American South. Segregationists were accused of being more totalitarian than their Soviet counterparts, and of bringing Soviet-style one party rule to the region. Finally, by looking in depth at two southern states, North Carolina and Virginia, this thesis will do more justice to the nuances and complexities of anticommunism than would be possible in a broader, regional study. Both states were at the legislative forefront of Massive Resistance, and both propounded a more sophisticated -- though no less determined -- brand of racism than most of their counterpartsi n the Deep South, largely as a consequence of their reliance on external investment.

This thesis considers the musical response of the American composer, Miriam Gideon to political events during the McCarthy era. It examines the interrelationships between politics, society and culture and considers how these are reflected in two works, Epitaphs from Robert Burns (1952) and Altered Steps to Altered States (1953) that Gideon composed during this period. Specifically, this thesis focuses on Gideon’s transition from teaching and composing music within an academic setting to preparing for life in a musical world, without support from mainstream academic institutions. Following the Introduction, Chapter 2 documents the rise of anti-communist practices on campus at Brooklyn College and City College, New York City where Miriam Gideon held music teaching posts. It reconstructs the personal events that led to the loss of both of these appointments and examines how and why this occurred. It is argued that Gideon entered a period of ‘inner exile,’ and this concept and its consequences for Gideon are explored in Chapter 3. An examination of her private diaries demonstrates that the effects of the McCarthy era were not only physical, but also psychological and social. Chapters 4-6 consider Gideon’s music through the perspective of inner exile and aim to show that the music that she wrote was a reflection of her experiences. Gideon’s return to academia in 1955 and her rehabilitation back into the academy are discussed in Chapter 7. A complete list of Gideon’s compositional output is included and is organised chronologically, alphabetically and by genre. This thesis examines new documents not previously available to scholars, and includes interviews conducted by the author with Gideon’s former students and colleagues.

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The purpose of this study is to examine the status of academic freedom and, more specifically, intramural and extramural speech at universities in the U.S. since 2000. Court opinions and briefs from benchmark court cases and the faculty's perspective of current academic freedom issues are analyzed to determine dominant trends and themes that have evolved since 2000. While others have studied the relationship between the First Amendment and academic freedom, this analysis brings current the discourse concerning the effect First Amendment court decisions have on the faculty speech. The central research question is to determine the effect court decisions have on the intramural and extramural speech of faculty and specifically to study how federal, state, and local events since 2000 have affected (a) the academic freedom of faculty in general, (b) the way universities handle faculty intramural speech, (c) the way universities handle faculty extramural speech when they speak both as a citizen and a public university employee, and (d) the ability of faculty to defend their academic freedom. Using post-modern theory, the two-phased mixed methods study deconstructs and analyzes (a) the six First Amendment court opinions and briefs and (b) the 19 interviews of public university faculty members. The first phase identified 11 dominant themes, which were used as the basis for the coding and the 19 interviews of public university faculty members. The interview coding and analysis identified 15 themes. Based on the Pearson Correlation Coefficient, four themes were identified in the court opinions and six in the interviews are discussed. The second phase also included surveys of the faculty interviewed and a quantitative analysis of the responses in order to classify the sample. The study found that public universities have complete control over academic freedom, and that it is a privilege granted to faculty based on their scholarly association with the university, not a right. Public university administrators, general counsels, deans, department chairs, and faculty will benefit from the study as it provides an intensive analysis of post-2000 court case logic and the current perceptions and apprehensions that faculty have concerning their intramural and extramural speech rights. / text

Thesis (M.A.)--Miami University, Dept. of History, 2009. / Title from first page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 36-41).

Please note: Editorial Studies works are permanently embargoed in OpenBU. No public access is forecasted for this item. To request private access, please click on the locked Download file link, and fill out the appropriate web form. / This edition is an annotated selection of the correspondences of two screenwriters, Michael Blankfort and Albert Maltz, who were affected by institutional anti-communism. Both were subpoenaed to appear before the House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC): Maltz refused to answer questions, went to prison for contempt of Congress as a member of the Hollywood Ten, and was blacklisted from the film industry for nearly two decades; Blankfort cooperated with the committee and continued to work in Hollywood. They had been close friends for quite some time, but never spoke again following Blankfort’s HUAC appearance, despite a few attempts by Blankfort at renewing the friendship. The letters span five decades, beginning with the period of radicalization in the 1930s, through the era of blacklisting and all that followed in its wake, and ending with their deaths in the 1980s. Blankfort and Maltz’s encounters with HUAC affected them their entire lives after: Blankfort in his need to defend his actions even decades later, and Maltz in his need to denounce any person who cooperated with the committee. The letters demonstrate humanity through the difficulty of the situation, the struggle of navigating the politics of the times, and are the writers’ attempts to explain and justify their actions. / 2031-01-01

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Dwight D. Eisenhower has been criticized as an anti-intellectual by scholars such as Richard Hofstadter. Eisenhower’s tenure as president of Columbia University was one segment of his career he was particularly criticized for because of his non-traditional approach to education there. This paper examines Eisenhower’s time at Columbia to explain how anti-intellectualism played into his university administration. It explains how his personality and general outlook came to clash with the intellectual environment of Columbia especially in the wake of the faculty revolt against former Columbia President Nicholas Murray Butler. It argues that Eisenhower utilized the Columbia institution to promote a Cold War educational agenda, which often belittled Columbia intellectuals and their scholarly pursuits. However, this paper also counter-argues that Eisenhower, despite accusations of anti-intellectualism, was an academically interested man who never engaged in true suppression of free thought despite pressure from McCarthyite influences in American government, media and business.

O objetivo dessa tese é investigar de que maneira Little Caesar (Mervyn Leroy, 1931) e Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky, 1947) registram, dentro do gênero gângster, questões como a Depressão na década de 1930, e o macarthismo na década de 1940, ao mesmo tempo em que estabelecem homologias estruturais entre o crime organizado e o mundo dos negócios. Tais questões surgem nesses dois filmes por força da matéria histórica envolvida nas condições de produção. Nossa tese é de que os filmes configuram, em diferentes medidas, estratégias de representação da matéria histórica apesar das tentativas de seu apagamento, como a censura e o macarthismo. / The aim of this thesis is to analyze how Little Caesar (Mervyn Leroy, 1931) and Force of Evil (Abraham Polonsky, 1947) portray, in the gangster genre, historically relevant questions such as the Great Depression in the 1930s and McCarthyism in the 1940s, while establishing structural homologies between organized crime and the business world. These themes arise in both films due to the strength of the historical substance implicated in the conditions of production. Our thesis is that these films depict, in different proportions, strategies of representation of the historical substance in spite of attempts to suppress it, such as censorship and McCarthyism.