Study On The American Anti-Communist Acts And Academic Freedom Protection

After the Second World War, the Congress of the United States enacted and passed a series of bills to suppress domestic labor movements. These laws restricted and deprived the fundamental rights and freedom of citizens, including Hobbs Act (1946), Taft-Hartley Act (1947), Monte-Nixon Act (1948), McAllen-Wood Act (1950), and Browner-Bartleby Law (1954). The first two bills relating to labor relations, trade union activities and other restricted content, deprived of political rights and economic freedom of workers; contents of the last three bills distorted the nature and purpose of the communist movements, and prohibited citizens from joining the Communist Party and other so called "conspiracy organizations." To clear the domestic subversion organizations, federal government were authorized the power to investigate teachers’ political speech and political activity, requiring teachers to take a loyalty oath to ensure that they will not join the Communist Party, otherwise they would be dismissal from school. The government behavior not only interfered with the freedom of speech and freedom of association protected by the Constitution, violating the constitutional rights of these political organizations and their members seriously, but also cast a negative impact on the academic freedom of university teachers.Being faced with the violation of individual rights by U.S. government, the university teachers had access to the courts to protect the fundamental rights and freedom, as citizens should have. From the beginning of the1950s, constitutional cases concerning loyalty oath and survey trialed by the Supreme Court are:Adler v. Board of Education (1952), Wieman v. Updegraff(1952), Sweezy v. New Hampshire (1957), Barenblatt v. United States (1959), Keyishian v. The Board of Regents (1967), and Whitehill v. Elkins (1967). In Adler, the Supreme Court held that New York State law requiring university teachers to take loyalty oath was constitutional; however, in Keyishian, the decision in Adler was overturned. In Sweezy, the Supreme Court reviewed relative state law on protecting of academic freedom grounds for the first time, finding that loyalty oath was unconstitutional. In Keyishian, the U.S. Supreme Court described academic freedom as a "special concern" of the First Amendment in order to further clarify the importance of constitutionally protected academic freedom. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court affirmed the institutional academic freedom of the university, that is "the four essential freedoms" of a university-to determine for itself on academic grounds "who may teach, what may be taught, how it shall be taught, and who may be admitted to study". In these cases relating to academic freedom, the U.S. Supreme Court interpreted the Constitution by using several methodologies:on one hand, the Supreme Court considered that the meaning of academic freedom should be implied in relevant provisions of Amendments; on the other hand, the Supreme Court affirmed the value of academic freedom to the pursuit of knowledge and truth, and to promote the development of a democratic society. Meanwhile, the Supreme Court fully exercised its power of judicial review, decided that bills that breached fundamental rights of university teachers and their freedom of expression, association, and religion, violated the basic principles of the U.S. Constitution and should be abolished, thus providing a sufficient case law basis for protecting the academic freedom of university teachers.