BY JOHN K. WILSON

Matthew Ehrlich’s new book, Dangerous Ideas on Campus: Sex, Conspiracy, and Academic Freedom in the Age of JFK, explores the history of two prominent academic freedom cases in the 1960s at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. Ehrlich is a professor emeritus of journalism at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign. His books include Kansas City vs. Oakland: The Bitter Sports Rivalry That Defined an Era and Radio Utopia: Postwar Audio Documentary in the Public Interest, I interviewed Ehrlich via email, and you can listen to another interview with Ehrlich online, and attend his virtual book launch on February 3, 2022, at 4 p.m. CT.

John K. Wilson: Your book focuses on two cases of extramural utterances at the University of Illinois, the firing of Leo Koch in 1960 for his leftist views on sexuality, and the protection of Revilo Oliver’s job in 1964 after his right-wing conspiracy theories about JFK’s assassination. What were the critical differences in these cases and their resolution—the ideology of the professor? Oliver’s tenured status? The policy changes made in the wake of Koch’s firing to protect academic freedom and due process?

Matthew Ehrlich: The most important difference was that Oliver was a tenured full professor, whereas Koch was an untenured assistant professor on a terminal contract set to expire the following year (he already had irritated his unit heads to the point that they had told him he would not be renewed). But Oliver also benefited from the University of Illinois wanting to avoid another academic freedom mess so soon after the Koch case, which had led to an AAUP censure and also had prompted the university to start strengthening due process protections for its faculty. The professors’ contrasting ideologies probably were less important than the specific issues at play in the two cases. Sex was a sufficiently touchy subject in the early 1960s that it provoked more outrage than did charges of treason aimed at a recently assassinated US president.

John K. Wilson: Although this is a book about two academic freedom controversies in the 1960s at the University of Illinois, there are echoes of McCarthyism here: the pressure to keep imposing the censorship of the 1950s, and the efforts to reject McCarthyism. How did the forces fighting for academic freedom ultimately prevail when public opinion, the newspapers, politicians, trustees, and administrators were largely opposed to them?

Matthew Ehrlich: The legacy of McCarthyism certainly was a factor in the Koch case; after Koch condoned premarital sex in a letter to the student newspaper, he became the target of a letter-writing campaign accusing him of communism. That campaign didn’t directly get Koch fired—Illinois trustees already were urging university president David Henry to discharge the professor, and Henry himself had found Koch’s letter to be deeply offensive. But once Koch was fired and the letter-writing campaign against him became public knowledge, it sparked a backlash that actually helped the cause of academic freedom, even if it didn’t save Koch’s job. Students and faculty at Illinois and other campuses protested; people across the country wrote their own angry letters condemning the firing. Finally the AAUP censured the university, which was sufficiently chastened by the whole affair that it revised its academic freedom statutes and resisted calls to act against Revilo Oliver. As David Henry later wrote about the Koch case, the AAUP censure “was, of course, some embarrassment. It is supposed to have that effect.” In short, public embarrassment works both ways. It can pressure a university to undercut its own faculty, but it also can pressure a university to support faculty and do what’s right.

John K. Wilson: One consequence of Koch’s firing was not only the changes made at the University of Illinois, but also how the AAUP dealt with extramural utterances. How did the Koch case affect the AAUP?

Matthew Ehrlich: There seems to be a difference of scholarly opinion regarding that question. You have argued that the case spurred the AAUP to strengthen extramural speech protections, eventually resulting in the assertion that “extramural utterances rarely bear upon the faculty member’s fitness for continuing service.” On the other hand, Hans-Joerg Tiede argues that the Koch case did not alter the AAUP’s longtime understanding of extramural speech; it just prompted the organization to clarify the intent of the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom and Tenure (namely by appending the 1970 Interpretive Comments that said that extramural utterances rarely were of legitimate concern). I would simply say that to the extent that the Koch case did encourage the addition of new, specific language protecting extramural expression, it boosted academic freedom and the AAUP’s role in promoting that freedom.

John K. Wilson: There are some interesting parallels between Leo Koch’s firing in 1960 and Steven Salaita’s in 2014 at Illinois: Controversial extramural utterances caused public outrage, but the decision to fire had already been made through trustee pressure and administrators anxious to appease those trustees. In both cases, the AAUP censured the U of I and forced reforms. Is campus censorship a problem doomed to repeat itself, or has progress been made? And is understanding the history of academic freedom an important tool for preventing future firings?

Matthew Ehrlich: Studying history is both discouraging and encouraging. It’s discouraging in that it sometimes can make one feel as though things never really improve. Certainly current developments in academia as related in this blog and elsewhere show that campus censorship is an ongoing problem, and it is likely to remain so for the foreseeable future. The erosion of tenure among many other concerns is not cause for optimism. However, history also shows us that we do not live in uniquely awful times and that the challenges we face now are not wholly unprecedented. Even in the 1960s, which sometimes is viewed nostalgically as a golden age for higher education, universities confronted intense political and financial pressures. The Koch and Oliver cases are a testament to that fact; the public uproar that they triggered happened at a time when the University of Illinois desperately needed more public funding to handle an enrollment surge brought on by the baby boom. The two cases—and the university’s differing responses to them—also suggest that administrators, trustees, and others can learn from their mistakes. So yes, in specific historical instances, progress has been made; and by studying those historical instances, we can find lessons in how to protect faculty and academic freedom.

John K. Wilson was a 2019-20 fellow with the University of California National Center for Free Speech and Civic Engagement, and is the author of eight books, including Patriotic Correctness: Academic Freedom and Its Enemies. He wrote about the Leo Koch case in the AAUP’s Journal of Academic Freedom.