Malcolm Cowley (photo from here)
With news coming every month, it seems, of controversial figures being invited and sometimes disinvited to speak on college campuses (Summers, Ayers, Churchill, Obama . . .—see here for one account), many people might think that the controversies are a fairly recent phenomenon. Or, they date it no further back than the academic culture wars of the late-1980s, with the rise of conservative criticism of academe being its initial impetus.
I recently came across another episode from way back in 1948. It appears in the volume Robert B. Heilman: His Life in Letters, edited by Edward Alexander, Richard J. Dunn, and Paul Jaussen. Heilman was head of the English Department at the University of Washington from 1948 to 1971, and in his first year he sent out a letter to the well-known writer, editor, and critic Malcolm Cowley asking about “the possibility of your being available for, and interested in, a visiting lectureship at the University” for one term. Cowley had written widely-circulated essays around that time on Hawthorne and Faulkner, and in his reply he stated that he was wrapping up a book on “the revival of American literature after 1910, extending to our own day.” (These were the days in which public intellectuals — Cowley, Irving Howe, and others — took literature seriously enough to write entire books on it.)
But Cowley added “a word of caution.” He admitted that he “belonged to various left front organizations before 1939, including one (League of American Writers) which Attorney General [Thomas C.] Clark has put on his famous list of subversive organizations.” Cowley resigned from the group eight years earlier, not because he disavowed its politics, but because he decided “politics was not the field for my activities.” He added a sarcastic judgment: “I thought I’d tell you all this, because legislative committees have been digging far into the past and taking over a field that properly belongs to Egyptologists.”
Heilman wrote back assuring him that his “past” wasn’t a problem, and repeated the offer (at the same time trying to recruit Robert Penn Warren to the department). He wrote a letter to the University committee which had a say in the Cowley appointment highlighting Cowley’s position as a “distinguished professional man of letters,” but mentioned his “political activity in the past as well,” which he considered “irrelevant to the question of his suitability.” The committee approved.
There were other forces in play, however, as Alexander explains in his Introduction. The Washington state legislature had a committee on the lookout for Communists, and there was “a fierce national debate that had raged throughout 1949 between two staunchly anti-Communist socialists — Irving Howe and Sidney Hook — about an incident at the University of Washington early in the year. Three of its professors had been fired and three placed on probation because of alleged membership in the Communist Party.”
Hook defended the firings in national periodicals as justified precisely on the grounds of academic freedom. That is, Alexander paraphrases, “they belonged to a political party which demanded absolute intellectual discipline of a kind that prevents free and honest functioning in the classroom.” True enough, but Howe opposed them on the grounds that “each teacher must be judged by his behavior in class and not by his party membership.”
When news of Cowley’s appointment got around, local newspapers and a member of the board of regents raised objections. When the rumblings came back to Cowley, he wrote to Heilman to say that “If you think there are going to be attacks that will prove embarrassing to the university, it would be wisest to call off our arrangement now, and fast.” Cowley didn’t want to make a cause out of himself (“I have absolutely no wish to be a victim or a martyr”), and he thought that the controversy would hinder his teaching.
He also provided more information: “During the period from 1932 to 1936 I was pretty crimson, or at least deep pink. I . . . reigstered as a Communist in 1934 and 1936 . . . I never joined the party, thank goodness, for it seems to me that a lot of people who did join it had their minds permanently twisted. After 1936 I was a great deal more critical of Communist tactics, but I was also deeply disturbed by Hitler and Franco and thought that in the European conflict the Russians were generally on the right side. I continued to think that way until the Russo-German Pact of 1939; then I got out of politics as gracefully and completely as I could.”
He added that he testified in the Hiss trial the year before, and he says he will have to testify again in the near future at which point, he predicts, “Chambers will unblushingly tell the newspapers that I gave false testimony.”
Heilman wrote back in capital letters assuring Cowley that all will be well. Cowley came, he taught for a term, and he departed without incident.
