BY HANK REICHMAN

Markert, Nickerson, and Davis

On October 30 I had the great honor and privilege of delivering the 29th annual Davis, Markert, Nickerson Academic Freedom Lecture at the University of Michigan.  In 1954 the University of Michigan suspended and then terminated Professors H. Chandler Davis and Mark Nickerson, a tenured faculty member, and suspended but then reinstated Professor Clement Markert for their refusal to answer questions before the U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities.  The AAUP censured the university in 1957 and, after a new Regents’ Bylaw, 5.09, was adopted, removed censure in 1958.  In 1990, at the initiative of the campus AAUP chapter, the University of Michigan Senate Assembly passed a resolution that deeply regretted “the failure of the University Community to protect the values of intellectual freedom” in 1954 and established this annual lecture.  The inaugural lecture was delivered on February 18, 1991, by Robert M. O’Neil, General Counsel of the AAUP, Professor of Law and Past President of the University of Virginia  The three professors were present and participated in a panel discussion after the lecture. Professors Markert and Nickerson are now deceased, but Chandler Davis still regularly attends the event and I was deeply moved by his introduction and by the opportunity to meet and converse at length with him.  Each annual lecture is now recorded on video.  Here is mine, devoted to the theme of “Do Adjuncts Have Academic Freedom?, or Why Tenure Matters”:

In 1990, the Senate Assembly called on the Michigan Board of Regents to take appropriate action to provide redress to the three professors, but the board declined.  The closest the university has come to an apology only came in 2015 in commencement remarks by President Mark Schlissel.  Here are some excerpts from those remarks:

Although punishment for one’s beliefs is antithetical to the mission of the academy where we espouse the values of academic, intellectual and expressive freedoms in pursuit of knowledge and understanding, many campuses succumbed to the scare-mongering and demagoguery of the McCarthy Era.

The University of Michigan unfortunately was no exception.

The hysteria of the Red Scare reared its head, right here, on the Michigan campus.

And we made a mistake. . . .

Three tenured U-M professors were questioned by a Congressional subcommittee about their political sympathies and about those with whom they associated.

All three refused to answer questions.

Professor Chandler Davis cited the First Amendment, in his refusal.

Professors Clement Markert and Mark Nickerson pleaded the Fifth Amendment, the protection against self-incrimination. The First and the Fifth Amendments are bedrock principles of the American constitution and our justice system – two of the rights our nation was founded upon.

But during the Red Scare, silence, along with the invoking of Constitutional rights, was considered an admission of guilt.

All three professors were immediately suspended by the University.

What happened next on campus is painful to hear about. But it also provides an opportunity to extract a lesson of great relevance today.

The university launched its own investigation, with various proceedings involving the administration and faculty.

The issue being evaluated was not the limits of academic freedom, nor competence in teaching and research, but a quality referred to as “academic integrity.”

Former U-M history professor David Hollinger, in writing about the events, explained that it was “possession of ‘intellectual integrity’ that … entitled individual faculty to academic freedom.

If it could be shown that a given colleague lacked this quality, the obligation to defend that colleague’s academic freedom disappeared.”

And “to be a communist was to betray ‘intellectual integrity.’”

Markert was found to have “intellectual integrity” because he ultimately answered questions in the university investigation that he’d refused to address in his congressional appearance. He was reinstated.

The U-M investigating committee, and a subsequent faculty appeals committee, recommended the dismissal of Davis and the retention of Nickerson.

Both were fired by the administration.

This was a horrible mistake.

In 1954, the university ignored both constitutional rights and long-held academic values.

Chandler Davis would later be convicted of contempt of Congress and sentenced to six months in prison. He is now an emeritus professor at the University of Toronto.

A complete list of past lectures can be found here.  More than a few past and current members of the AAUP’s Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure are on the list.  I know of no other such lecture at any other college or university in the U.S.