No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities

The story of the traumatic impact of McCarthyism on government employees and Hollywood screenwriters during the 1950s is all too familiar, but what happened on college and university campuses during this period is barely known. No Ivory Tower recounts the previously untold story of how the anti-Communist furor affected the nation's college teachers, administrators, trustees, and students. As Ellen Schrecker shows,the hundreds of professors who were called before the House Un-American Activities Committee and other government panels confronted the same dilemma most other witnesses faced. They had to decide whether to cooperate with the committees and “name names” or to refuse such cooperation and risk losing their jobs.