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CHANDLER DAVIS: DISSENT AND SOLIDARITY  
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David Palumbo-Liu
February 29, 2024
Against the Current
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_ Davis viewed his confrontation with HUAC and the University of
Michigan as an opportunity. He willingly risked both his freedom and
his career to expose and perhaps even put an end to the
establishment’s willingness to quash left political dissent. _

, Monthly Review Press

 

The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis:
McCarthyism, Communism, and the Myth of Academic Freedom
By Steve Batterson
Monthly Review Press, 2023, 200 pages, $16 paperback.

I FIND IT find it both rewarding and difficult to write this review.
Rewarding, because Batterson’s study of this remarkable individual
tells us much about how radical activists, so often out of step with
their times, can come to be vindicated and their causes recognized as
worthy and just.

The difficulty I find myself in is that times have changed again, and
whatever victories we may be witnessed coming out of the Red Scare
have been replaced by a fresh set of challenges.

This reflux of reactionary politics is easily glimpsed in this
juxtaposition, in his preface, Batterson notes:

_“In his winter [2015] commencement, University of Michigan
President Mark Schlissel urged graduates to consider the parallel [of
then-current Islamophobic attacks] to the actions taken in 1954
against Davis and his colleagues: ‘I hope you can apply the lessons
learned from the mistakes made by both our nation and our university
during the McCarthy era.’”_

It’s useful here to provide a fuller sample of then-president
Schlissel’s speech:

_“As a nation, we are struggling mightily with the tensions in
trying to balance our constitutional rights and shared values with our
sense of safety, in our communities, on our campuses, all the way to
the level of national security…. History teaches us moments such as
these — these right now — are when we are most likely to bow to
fear, to sacrifice our freedoms and rights in return for a perceived
increase in safety and security… But history tells us another story
too — that we can learn from our mistakes.”_

Any dialectician will tell you that any lesson learned does not stand
on its own, but must be buttressed with the necessary historical
circumstances and a political will not to forget. Yet how quickly this
particular lesson has been forgotten, with a vengeance, and at the
University of Michigan no less.

In 2023, not all that distant from 2015, another president of the
University of Michigan, Santa J. Ono, had this to say on the occasion
of Hamas’ October 7th attacks on Israel:

_“This violence has caused profound pain within the internationally
and culturally diverse University of Michigan community. It is almost
certain that more innocent civilians will lose their lives as the
fighting escalates._

_“Earlier today I began reaching out to the leaders of the major
universities in Israel  Hebrew University, Tel Aviv University,
Technion, Weizmann, and Ben Gurion — to express my deep concern for
the students, faculty and staff at these world-class institutions,
with all of which the University of Michigan has well-established
joint research relationships. I also reaffirmed our steadfast
commitment to our work with these universities.”_

It would take too much space in this review to explain fully how
morally appalling this statement is. President Ono bemoans the loss of
innocent civilian life, yet is silent on the fact that the vast
majority of lost lives are Palestinian, at the hands of the very
Israeli state to which he declares allegiance.

Ono knows full well that those universities are deeply enmeshed in the
Israeli state, and that their research is instrumental in providing
both the technologies and ideological discourses that as of this
writing have killed more than 30,000 Palestinians, the vast majority
innocent civilians, and 70 percent of whom are women and children.

In trumpeting UM’s “well-established joint research
relationships” with these institutions, and its “steadfast
commitment to our work with these universities,” Ono is not only
falling in line with other U.S. university presidents in support of
Israel, he goes one step further, vowing to be undeterred by calls to
boycott Israeli universities.

More recently, and directly connected to the issues of freedom of
speech which are central to this review, Ono prohibited students from
even voting on two resolutions regarding the war in Gaza. Despite the
fact that each resolution received over a thousand signatures asking
for a vote, Ono squelched even a vote on their merits on the grounds
that the measures are “divisive.”

It seems to escape him that his prohibition could be applied
essentially against any vote in any democracy. Dawud Walid, Executive
Director of the Michigan chapter of the Council on American-Islamic
Relations remarked, “Unfortunately, the university which is supposed
to be an environment for debating competing ideas, is undermining
freedom of speech and conscience of its own student body.”

A Forceful Presence

While I am sure that Chandler Davis would wince at this turn of
events, I doubt he would be surprised. For as this book shows, in his
lifetime he had seen countless instances of principles betrayed.

In this manner as well as others, Batterson’s book performs a double
service: its historical account teaches us about the past, but also
about our contemporary struggles. And, remarkably, Chandler Davis was
an equally forceful presence in both.

In 1954, Davis and two of his colleagues at the University of
Michigan, Ann Arbor, were fired after they refused to cooperate in
hearings conducted by the House Committee on Un-American Activities.

Batterson gives a comprehensive report as to not only these cases, but
also the political climate of the times, the exact role played by the
FBI, the courts, and the University of Michigan. Indeed, the author
shows precisely how they colluded.

In studying the repressive measures of politicians and federal
agencies working in tandem with universities used to squelch any sign
of Communism or Communist “sympathies,” or just plain dissent, one
can learn much about today’s repression of free speech and academic
freedom.

Those critical of Israeli policies face censorship, silencing, and
university tribunals aided and abetted by forces outside the
university, including rich donors, politicians, Zionist pressure
groups and Israeli governmental operatives. All this falls into one or
another brand of McCarthyism — whether the original or its
latter-day incarnation.

As much as it would be fitting to center on Chandler Davis’s story,
I want to offer a particular appreciation of Batterson’s book and a
deeper appreciation of the life and spirit of Chandler Davis, casting
both in the context of dissent and solidarity.

I feel this is more than legitimate, because at nearly every moment in
The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis we find Davis (referred to
lovingly as Chan throughout the book) working with others — his
parents, his comrades, his students, his attorneys, or most especially
his life partner and wife Natalie Zemon Davis, herself a noted
cultural and social historian of modern Europe, particularly of
France, who sadly has also recently died.

His very refusal to answer HUAC’s questions, an act of dissent that
earned him a six-month stint in a federal penitentiary and
unemployability in the American academy forever, was an act of
solidarity — he would not give up names, nor would he inform on any
of the activities of any groups that were critical of the United
States.

Chandler Davis was one of four members of the faculty subpoenaed by
House Un-American Activities Committee [HUAC] in 1953.

Economist Lawrence Klein responded to all questions and agreed with
committee counsel Frank Tavenner that “the objectives that the
Communist Party is aiming toward are wrong in principle, theory, and
practice.” Klein asserted that he had been “used” by the CP. He
was then dismissed from the hearing.

Two others, Clement Markert and Mark Nickerson, did not fare as well.
Markert had long been the subject of FBI interest. He had considered
himself a communist starting in 1935 and through much of the 1940s had
been a member of the Party. His apartment had been searched and
yielded a wide range of communist materials.

Another source of suspicion against Markert was his combat in the
Spanish Civil War on behalf of the Republican forces.  Although it
was clear the committee had all this information, Markert took the
Fifth Amendment, as did professor of pharma­cology Mark Nickerson.
Like Davis, both Markert and Nickerson had left the Communist Party by
the time of the hearings, yet all three were fired by the University.

Standing on Principle

Davis had initially joined the Communist Party in 1943 while a student
at Harvard (“it was just what I had been expecting to do all my
life”), but by the end of that year he had enlisted in the V-12 Navy
training program at Harvard to fight Hitler, as was standard practice
for CPUSA members, and resigned from the Party.

On top of that, he had also become disillusioned with CPUSA. Chandler
was beginning to have serious doubts — specifically the CP’s
unwavering support of the Soviet Union, whose brutal treatment of
dissidents was well known.

While he on principle was willing to retain party membership and
critique it from within, Chandler wrote, “What had changed between
1952 and 1953 is that my Party membership had become totally useless
to my actual political agitation, which was done through organizations
like ASP, student groups, etc., …the CP… was simply out of
steam.”

Despite his growing doubts about the Party, he still refused to give
up his principles. As early as 1950, when he had received an
appointment at the University of California, Los Angeles, he refused
to sign the university-mandated loyalty oath, that required that all
employees attest to the fact that they were not members of the
Communist Party.

Davis wrote, “in this situation even if I had left the Party I would
not have been willing to sign the oath, because it would have been a
breach of solidarity with the courageous resistance to it.”
 Chandler resigned his appointment. He then landed a mathematics
instructorship at the University of Michigan.

Early that same year, physicist Klaus Fuchs confessed to spying on the
Manhattan Project for the Soviet Union and Senator Joseph McCarthy
alleged that members of the CPUSA had infiltrated the State
Department. Investigations were made into any organization that might
serve as a front for Communism.

By then Chandler and Natalie Zemon Davis had joined a local group
called the “Council of Arts, Sciences, and Professions.” Many
faculty and graduate students were members. Both HUAC and the FBI
considered it to be harboring Communists.

Learning that HUAC might be investigating the Council, Natalie and a
psychology instructor named Elizabeth Douvan wrote an essay critical
of HUAC, which became a 12-page, anonymously-authored pamphlet
entitled “Operation Mind.”

Section titles included, “A Decade of ‘Smear’ Tactics,”
“What are ‘Un-American’ Ideas,” “The Committee’s
Contribution to American Life: Thought Purge and Inquisition,” and
“Here is What You Can Do to Prevent Thought Control in America.”

The FBI and HUAC both believed Chandler was the author. Along with
this belief, and the evidence of his open actions in favor of free
speech and academic freedom on campus, the FBI also had an informant
inside the Council. The informant told the FBI that Davis was involved
in research into Quantum Mechanics Theory, which was believed to be
used in atomic energy research. This led to the Davises having their
passports seized.

Though he had withdrawn from all participation with the CPUSA when he
was visited by an HUAC agent in 1953, his principles again remained
intact and vital. The agent reported, “He refused, when advised that
the Committee had evidence with respect to his Communist Party
affiliations, to discuss the subject. As a matter of fact, he ordered
me from his office.”

Unlike those who took the Fifth Amendment, Davis decided to rely on
the First Amendment’s protection of free speech and association,
rather than follow most others who evoked the Fifth Amendment
protection against self-incrimination. He did so in order to directly
get to the heart of the matter rather than evade it.

As Ellen Schrecker writes in her Introduction to the book, “[Davis]
viewed his confrontation with HUAC and the following inquisition at
the University of Michigan as an opportunity. He willingly risked both
his freedom and his career to expose and perhaps even put an end to
the mainstream establishment’s willingness to quash left-wing
political dissent.”

At that point, Chandler Davis was 27 years old.

University-Government Complicity

For a number of both simple and complex reasons that Batterson ably
details, Chandler Davis’s gambit failed and he ended up serving
six-month sentence in Danbury Federal Penitentiary.

When Michigan president Harlan Hatcher learned of HUAC’s interest in
Chandler, Hatcher reached out to the Committee to offer his
cooperation. Thus began a long partnership between the government and
the University. In fact, most shocking about Batterson’s account is
just how in sync the two investigations were, issues of free speech
and academic freedom notwithstanding.

This kind of cooperation was not restricted to individual campuses.
Batterson offers a devastating account of how the Association of
American Universities (AAU), a prestigious organization of 37 leading
universities, issued a guidance whose language includes this passage:
“a scholar must have integrity and independence. This renders
impossible adherence to such a regime as Russia and its satellites. No
one who accepts or advocates such principles and methods has any place
in a university.”

The AAU urged professors to inform on those it suspected of Communist
sympathies.

The case against Davis was particularly marked by egregious
improprieties and unethical behavior. Davis himself viewed the
University as an “appendage” of HUAC.

There were no fewer than three faculty committees convened to hear
different aspects of his case. One committee wrote that “in the
absence of proof Davis is a member of the party we must assume in all
justice that he is not.”  It went on to say, “We conclude that we
do not find his conduct before the Clardy Committee or as a member of
the University any ground on which he can be justly dismissed.”

Finding this not the desired conclusion, President Hatch appointed an
ad hoc committee, which conducted secret, off-the-record interviews,
and ultimately decided that Davis should be fired, thus delivering to
Hatch the result he wanted. They accused Davis of “failing to be
candid.”

Hatch wrote to Davis, “This conduct is inexcusable in a member of
our profession who seeks at the same time the protection of and
continued membership in the University whose policies he disdains and
whose responsibilities he ignores.”

What then were the policies that Davis “disdained”? They were, in
sum, policies purposefully bent to conform to the AAU directive to
dismiss those who had at any time sympathized with Communism.
Batterson points out that the academic organization comprised of
members of the professoriate, the American Association of University
Professors (AAUP), issued a report — in direct contrast to the
association of administrators — finding that mere membership in the
CP was an insufficient ground for dismissal.

Climate of the Times

Batterson provides a detailed account of the various cases of several
scholars across the country who were brought before HUAC to illustrate
the climate of the times, the nature of both the prosecutions and
defenses, to give us a vivid sense of the options before Davis, and an
appreciation of the risk he took in not taking the Fifth as others had
done, but rather to mount a First Amendment defense.

Again, Batterson explains in detail how and why, given the
vicissitudes of the times, Davis failed. The book shows the ebb and
flow of conservative and liberal jurists, and different prevailing
notions of the role of the courts. One of main points of book is how
much “justice” depended on political intrigues and power, and
sheer chance.

In 1959, the U.S. Supreme Court declined to hear Chandler Davis’s
case. Five years after receiving his indictment, Davis was forced to
serve his six-month sentence. He also was fired by the University of
Michigan and blacklisted by nearly 150 U.S. mathematics departments.

After finishing his sentence in 1960, Davis remained blacklisted in
the United States but his brilliance as a mathematician resulted in
his being offered an appointment at the University of Toronto and
Natalie was given an appointment in History.

Chandler Davis became a major figure in the fields of linear algebra
and operator theory: he supervised 15 doctoral theses; he was elected
to vice-president of the American Mathematical Society; and he served
on numerous editorial boards, including a long stint as
editor-in-chief of _The Mathematical Intelligencer._ Not only a
brilliant mathematician and teacher, Davis was also a renowned science
fiction author and continued his activism across many causes, right up
to his death.

Natalie Zemon Davis became recognized as one of the foremost
historians of her generation. She was given an appointment in History
at the University of California, Berkeley, and later at Princeton as
Henry Charles Lea Professor of History. She was awarded the Ludwig
Holberg International Prize and the United States’ National
Humanities Medal, She held honorary degrees from over 50 universities,
including Harvard, Princeton, Yale, Chicago, Oxford and Cambridge.

“Operation Mind” Vindicated

As I followed the twists and turns of this case and finished the
reading the book, one thing struck me and remains as one of its most
significant and indeed moving elements. One of the primary documents
used to attack Chandler was in fact something that in retrospect seems
benign — the 12-page pamphlet “Operation Mind,” a text he
hadn’t even authored.

This sticks in my mind for two reasons. First, even though
“Operation Mind” seems a flimsy document to hang such an important
case on, in fact it was substantial in a way only history would prove
— the analysis and critique of its 12 pages has over time been
vindicated, and its insights actually normalized in our historical
memory of the age.

We are indeed fortunate that “Operation Mind” was reissued in
2022
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Disobedience Press with an introduction by University of Michigan
Professor Silke-Maria Wieneck.

Second, I was deeply impressed that Davis would use his loyalty to his
comrades and the cause to serve a larger purpose still — to expose
the wrongness of the federal investigation and the university case
against him, all to his peril, and put this faith in the First
Amendment having any meaning, is astounding. What he exposed for the
world to see about its frailty came at a tremendous cost to him and
his family.

Allow me to end on a personal note, to show just how consistent
Chandler Davis was.

I first met Chandler and Natalie Davis in December 2014, in Toronto.
We had corresponded before with regard to activism for Palestinian
liberation. At our lunch Chandler casually asked how long I was going
to be in town. I said for about 10 days.

He said, well if you’re not busy, on Thursday we have a
demonstration in front of the Israeli embassy. He added, “we
actually do this every Thursday.” Then Natalie added, “and have
done so every Thursday for the last 13 years.” Mind you, this was
December.

I went, of course, and was struck by the fact that at age 63, I was
probably one of the youngest people there. Chandler would have been
88. Chandler and Natalie Davis were active activists to the end —
emails only stopped in the last months. Throughout all that time, they
were consistent, humane, and filled with good humor and moral outrage.

To end, I will quote from one of the pieces Chandler shared with me,
one which resonates with the topic of this book. It’s an essay from
1960 called “From an Exile.” In it he articulates the second
element of the twin stream of solidarity/dissent I have used to
comment on Batterson’s wonderful book:

_“I am not a professor. Maybe I never will be one._

_“My apprenticeship was honorable, as a teaching fellow at Harvard,
where I got my Ph.D. in mathematics, and as an instructor at the
University of Michigan. I loved the university life. Not that it
occurred to me at the time to compare it to any other; I had never
seriously considered leaving it._

_“However, it happened that one summer ten distinguished members of
my faculty convened (five at a time) and unanimously declared me
guilty of ‘deviousness, artfulness, and indirection hardly to be
expected of a University colleague.’ I had refused, first before the
House Committee on Un-American Activities and then before these juries
of professors, to answer yes or no to the question, was I a
Communist…._

_“More than you need the exiles in particular, you need dissent in
general, a profusion of ideas richer than you have seen before. You
must welcome dissent; you must welcome serious, systematic,
proselytizing dissent — not only the playful, the fitful, or the
eclectic; you must value it enough, not merely to refrain from
expelling it yourselves, but to refuse to have it torn from you by
outsiders. You must welcome dissent, not in a whisper when alone, but
publicly so potential dissenters can hear you.”_

Chandler Davis will always be that figure, and we have to all make
sure he will never be alone.

March-April 2024, ATC 229

_David Palumbo-Liu is a professor of comparative literature at
Stanford University._

_Against the Current is the analytical and activist journal sponsored
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* McCarthyism
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* Communism
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* Academic Freedom
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