Duke Prof: Disagreement is not McCarthyism

Duke University's student newspaper, The Chronicle, today published a letter from Professor of Economics Roy Weintraub in which he references a "flyer" for the "Shut Up and Teach" event sponsored on campus Feb. 12 by members of Duke faculty's Group of 88.

It follows in full; after which I offer a few comments.

John
____________________________________________

To the editor:

I have read the "flyer" for Monday's "Shut Up and Teach" panel discussion, with its reference to Joseph McCarthy, suggesting that dark forces are trying to silence some politically minded Duke faculty.

In the late 1940s, my father, an economist, was attacked in newspaper editorials in The Brooklyn Eagle for teaching communism to nice Catholic boys at St. Johns University. He was, of course, an early Keynesian.

In the late 1940s, the man who would become my doctoral adviser had to leave the United States for almost a decade to avoid the agitated involvement of the Regents of the University of Michigan in his tenure case, based on his admitted connection with the Communist Party as a graduate student and young instructor. In those years with the Smith Act in place, one could be jailed for being a Communist Party member. That he was doing the work for which he would later win the Nobel Prize mattered not at all to the Regents.

And my college classmate was Julius and Ethel Rosenberg's older son.

So I read with astonishment the recent panelists' invocation of McCarthyism as their characterization of the criticism they have received for their public statements or writings. They face no death sentence, no jail time, no threats from Trustees or administrators of employment termination, no loss of income, no loss of custody of their children, no loss of their passports, no reduction whatsoever in their public or private circumstances.

I don't ask the panelists to shut up and teach. I ask them instead to understand that for various Duke faculty, staff, administrators, students, parents and alumni to disagree with them in public or in private is neither McCarthyism nor an academic travesty and betrayal of the values of our institution, but is rather an expression of their believing otherwise.

E. Roy Weintraub

Professor of Economics
__________________________________________

It's very hard to find the words to express the relief, gladness and pride I felt when I read Professor Weintraub's letter.

It reminded me of the quietly spoken, brief, clearly stated, factually supported, carefully reasoned lectures with which the many outstanding professors I was fortunate to have at Duke would often begin a class before opening it up for discussion.

In just a few paragraphs Weintraub explained what McCarthyism was really like; highlighted shame claims of victimization; and rightly asserted that free, civil questioning and disagreement not only have a place at Duke, but affirm its essence and purpose.

Thank you, Professsor Weintraub.