Andrew Leonard: The GOP War on Labor Moves to Academia
[Andrew Leonard is a staff writer at Salon.]
In March 1949, a group of Illinois college students traveled to Springfield, Ill., to protest a group of anti-Communist subversion bills introduced by state Sen. Paul Broyles, the chairman of the Seditious Activities Intelligence Commission. Broyles wanted to outlaw the Communist Party, make membership in a Communist "front organization" a felony, and require all public-sector workers -- including public school teachers and university professors -- to swear loyalty oaths.
The protests drew wide attention and prompted the hasty passage of a joint resolution declaring that "It appears that these students are being indoctrinated with Communistic and other subversive theories contrary to our free systems of representative government." A public investigation of whether University of Chicago professors were responsible for such indoctrination followed, but mostly fizzled out after a bravura performance by University of Chicago chancellor Robert Hutchins....
We don't want government employees improperly influencing the political process. But drawing the line for what is appropriate for a teacher can get very tricky. And I don't think I am the only person who is troubled by the fact that at the very same time that conservatives are attempting to stamp out every last vestige of labor activism that might benefit from the taxpayer dollar, restrictions on the ability of corporations and well-capitalized special interests to influence the political process are being shredded. Unions may have once represented a "countervailing force" to the power of big capital, but they do so no longer. For all intents and purposes, the corporations have won. The spectacle of the ongoing evisceration of the Dodd-Frank bank reform bill, which was never very strong to begin with, in tandem with the incredible growth in financial sector profits so soon after one of the greatest financial crises in the history of the United States, tells us all we need to know on that front....
Read entire article at Salon
In March 1949, a group of Illinois college students traveled to Springfield, Ill., to protest a group of anti-Communist subversion bills introduced by state Sen. Paul Broyles, the chairman of the Seditious Activities Intelligence Commission. Broyles wanted to outlaw the Communist Party, make membership in a Communist "front organization" a felony, and require all public-sector workers -- including public school teachers and university professors -- to swear loyalty oaths.
The protests drew wide attention and prompted the hasty passage of a joint resolution declaring that "It appears that these students are being indoctrinated with Communistic and other subversive theories contrary to our free systems of representative government." A public investigation of whether University of Chicago professors were responsible for such indoctrination followed, but mostly fizzled out after a bravura performance by University of Chicago chancellor Robert Hutchins....
We don't want government employees improperly influencing the political process. But drawing the line for what is appropriate for a teacher can get very tricky. And I don't think I am the only person who is troubled by the fact that at the very same time that conservatives are attempting to stamp out every last vestige of labor activism that might benefit from the taxpayer dollar, restrictions on the ability of corporations and well-capitalized special interests to influence the political process are being shredded. Unions may have once represented a "countervailing force" to the power of big capital, but they do so no longer. For all intents and purposes, the corporations have won. The spectacle of the ongoing evisceration of the Dodd-Frank bank reform bill, which was never very strong to begin with, in tandem with the incredible growth in financial sector profits so soon after one of the greatest financial crises in the history of the United States, tells us all we need to know on that front....