Red Scare Collection

Between 1999 and 2005, Clint Talbott of the Daily Camera and Professor Paul Levitt of the University of Colorado English Department conducted an inquiry into the 1951 University of Colorado Board of Regents investigation into Communism on campus. Clint Talbot was writing investigative journalism pieces for the Daily Camera and Professor Levitt was finishing a novel, Dark Matters (University of New Mexico Press, 2004), on the McCarthy period at the University. Anti-communist fervor in Colorado, from the public, the state house, the state legislature, the press, and law enforcement had been building since 1946, as it had been around the country. In December of 1950, David Hawkins, a University of Colorado Philosophy Professor testified as a witness in front of the House Un-American Activities Committee during hearings that sought to investigate the presence of Communist agents in wartime atomic research projects. During his testimony, Hawkins, former historian of the Manhattan Project, admitted to being a member of the Communist Party from 1938 to 1943. Hawkins’ previous Communist affiliations met with considerable publicity, and the University of Colorado came under scrutiny as a possible hot-bed for “un-American” ideology.(1) Early in 1951, after a meeting with Governor Daniel Thornton, the University of Colorado Board of Regents ordered that a university-run investigation be conducted. Under the direction of the Board, then University of Colorado President, Robert. L. Stearns chose two former FBI agents, Dudley I. Hutchinson and Harold Hafer, then working in Colorado as attorneys, to conduct the investigation. In the wake of the Hawkins controversy, the Board also announced that it would strengthen loyalty requirements by reinstating a dormant oath-taking procedure for all faculty.(2) As a consequence of the investigation and loyalty oath requirements, two professors were dismissed—or, as untenured faculty, did not have their contracts renewed.(3) Irving Goodman was found to have lied about not being a member of the Communist Party, and Morris Judd refused to answer questions about his political past.(4) Judd’s dismissal prompted a review by the faculty Committee on Privilege and Tenure who ruled that Judd’s academic freedom was not violated. The Regent’s investigation, chaired by President Stearns, cleared the rest of the “tenured”(5) faculty, including Hawkins, Zinke, Cohen, and Garnsey, on all of whom the FBI kept files of considerable length. In 1953, after the report on the investigation was finished, in response to calls to either release or destroy the report, the President’s Office placed all relevant files into a bank safety deposit box presumably to protect the reputations of both the individuals accused and their individual accusers. In 2001, as Talbott and Levitt sought information about the investigation, their research was rendered difficult because the report remained in the safety deposit box. Talbott submitted a request to the Board of Regents to gain access to the document, but was denied. In response, the Daily Camera sued for the document’s release under the Colorado Open Records Act.(6) However, before the judge in the case made a ruling, the Board of Regents voted 8-1 to release the report to the public in May of 2002.(7) These files were donated to the Archives, University of Colorado Boulder Libraries shortly thereafter and are now housed with the President’s Office Papers. Clint Talbott and the Daily Camera, in search of more evidence, filed Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests for Federal Bureau of Investigation files on specific University of Colorado faculty and administrators. After conducting this research, Talbott wrote a series of articles for the Daily Camera calling into question the University’s actions during this time. After Talbott published an article arguing that, “the university has wrongly lionized [Robert L. Stearns] as a champion of free expression,”(8) and Paul Levitt called to rename the University of Colorado’s prominent Stearns Award,(9) the University’s Alumni Association, which gives the award, considered removing Stearns’ name. However, the Association ultimately made the decision to retain Stearns’ name on the award. Although the collection material primarily includes information about Communism at the University of Colorado relevant to the 1951 investigations, some files contain documents from the following decades. Most notably, the FBI file of Thomas Riha, Univserity of Colorado Associate Russian Professor from 1967 to 1969, contains information about Riha’s 1969 disappearance under mysterious circumstances. As the Daily Camera prepared to leave its downtown Boulder address in 2010, Editor Kevin Kauffman donated Talbott’s research materials to the University of Colorado Archives.

(1) William E. Davis, “A Place, an Atmosphere, a Tradition (1946-1953): Controversy and Academic Freedom,” Glory Colorado: A History of the University of Colorado: 1958-1963 (Boulder, Colorado: Pruett Press, Inc., 1965). (2) George McWilliams, “Ex-FBI Man To Direct Red Probe,” The Denver Post, February 5, 1951, Red Scare Collection, 6-23, Special Collections and Archives, University of Colorado Boulder Libraries. (3) On the question of “dismissal” vs. “non-reappointment”: Henry W. Ehrmann, Morris E. Garnsey, Dissenting opinion on the Morris Judd case before the University of Colorado Committee on Privilege and Tenure, Red Scare Collection, 6-22, Special Collections and Archives, University of Colorado Boulder Libraries. (4) Ibid, 7. (5) According to University of Colorado Board of Regents’ minutes dated August 27, 1966, the University adopted the American Association of University Professors’ “1940 Statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure” on May 11, 1965. Prior to this date, and during the 1951 investigation, neither tenure nor academic freedom as it is conceived of today were established at the University. (6) Clint Talbott, “A half-century later, professor hears accusers,” Daily Camera, May 11, 2002, accessed July 18, 2016, http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/681810/posts. (7) Matt Sebastian, “CU Red Scare report released,” Daily Camera, May 11, 2002, accessed July 18, 2016, http://lists.csbs.utah.edu/pipermail/marxism/2002-May/068815.html. (8) Clint Talbott, “CU boss was mole for FBI,” Daily Camera, October 3, 2002. (9) Jennifer Hamilton, “Ex-Colorado Professor Feels the Sting of McCarthyism, Betrayal,” Los Angeles Times, March 9, 2003, accessed July 18, 2016, http://articles.latimes.com/2003/mar/09/news/adna-prof9.