Ellen Schrecker

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Ellen Schrecker
Born (1938-08-04) August 4, 1938 (age 86)
Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, United States
Employer Stern College for Women
TitleProfessor
Spouse(s)John E. Schrecker, Feb. 18, 1962 (div. Mar. 1979)
Marvin E. Gettleman, Aug. 28, 1981 - January 7, 2017)
ChildrenMichael Franz
Daniel Edwin
Parent(s)Edwin II and Margaret Dannenbaum Wolf
AwardsBunting Inst Fel, 77-78; Res Fel, Harry S. Truman Libr, 87; Outstanding Book Awd, Hist of Educ Soc, 87; Fel Nat Humanities Center, 94-95; Outstanding Acad Book "Choice", 98.
Website Yeshiva University: Faculty web page
Notes

Ellen Wolf Schrecker (born August 4, 1938) is an American professor emerita of American history at Yeshiva University. She has received the Frederick Ewen Academic Freedom Fellowship at the Tamiment Library at NYU. She is known primarily for her work in the history of McCarthyism. Historian Ronald Radosh has described her as "the dean of the anti-anti-Communist historians." [3]

Contents

Background

Schrecker graduated magna cum laude from Radcliffe College in 1960 and earned her M.A. in 1962 and her doctorate in 1974, both from Harvard University.

Career

She has taught at Harvard, Princeton, New York University, the New School for Social Research, and Columbia. From 1998 to 2002, Schrecker was the editor of Academe, the journal of the American Association of University Professors. [2]

Personal life

Schrecker married Marvin Gettleman (1933 – 2017), a professor emeritus of history. [4]

Political views

Schrecker has said that she is "a card-carrying member of the American Civil Liberties Union who undertook the study of McCarthyism precisely because of my opposition to its depredations against freedom of speech," and that "in this country[,] McCarthyism did more damage to the constitution than the American Communist party ever did." [5] In a reply to an essay that Schrecker and Maurice Isserman wrote in The Nation in 2000, John Earl Haynes quoted the leader of the UDA, the predecessor of the politically progressive ADA, who stated that "an alliance between liberals and Communists [would] betray liberalism's bedrock democratic values." Haynes cited as evidence of Schrecker's illiberalism her statement that "cold war liberalism did not, in fact, 'get it right.'" [6] Schrecker has been criticized by Trotskyites for being excessively concerned for the reputations of persons connected with the Stalin-supporting Communist Party USA, noting that the CPUSA supported the US government's prosecution of Trotskyites under the Smith Act and, in general, persecuted socialists who did not support Stalin's regime. [7]

Schrecker has written critically of David Horowitz's "academic bill of rights" manifesto against what he considers a predominant liberal bias in American higher education. She concurred with the ACLU and Amnesty International, the Center for Constitutional Rights, and the American Association of University Professors in condemning the University of South Florida's 2003 dismissal of a tenured faculty member: the Palestinian-born, professor of computer engineering Sami Al-Arian, following his federal indictment during the Bush presidency on charges of raising money for terrorism through his support for Palestinian causes. Schrecker wrote:

Just as charges of communist sympathies in the 1950s destroyed the careers of people who studied China, so today the Arab-Israeli conflict plagues scholars who come from or study the Middle East. Predictably, the first major academic-freedom case to arise after September 11 involved a Palestinian nationalist, the already-controversial University of South Florida professor of computer engineering Sami Al-Arian, suspended and then fired after the federal government charged him with supporting terrorism. His summary dismissal, even if the university were to revisit it in light of his recent acquittal, is a classic violation of academic freedom: It involved his off-campus political activities. [8] [9]

Bibliography

Schrecker's best known book is Many Are the Crimes: McCarthyism in America (1998), about which Kirkus Reviews wrote, "It is no easy task bringing new life to an era already as dissected as the McCarthy era, yet this is what Schrecker accomplishes in a magnificent study of how and why McCarthyism happened and how its shadow still darkens our lives." In addition, she has written on political repression, academic freedom, Soviet espionage during the Cold War, Franco-American relations in the 1920s ( subject of her PhD dissertation), and Chinese cuisine.

Books

Articles, chapters

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">McCarthyism</span> Phenomenon of US political rhetoric after WWII

McCarthyism, also known as the Second Red Scare, was the political repression and persecution of left-wing individuals and a campaign spreading fear of communist and Soviet influence on American institutions and of Soviet espionage in the United States during the late 1940s through the 1950s. After the mid-1950s, U.S. Senator Joseph McCarthy, who had spearheaded the campaign, gradually lost his public popularity and credibility after several of his accusations were found to be false. The U.S. Supreme Court under Chief Justice Earl Warren made a series of rulings on civil and political rights that overturned several key laws and legislative directives, and helped bring an end to the Second Red Scare. Historians have suggested since the 1980s that as McCarthy's involvement was less central than that of others, a different and more accurate term should be used instead that more accurately conveys the breadth of the phenomenon, and that the term McCarthyism is, in the modern day, outdated. Ellen Schrecker has suggested that Hooverism, after FBI Head J. Edgar Hoover, is more appropriate.

The Venona project was a United States counterintelligence program initiated during World War II by the United States Army's Signal Intelligence Service and later absorbed by the National Security Agency (NSA), that ran from February 1, 1943, until October 1, 1980. It was intended to decrypt messages transmitted by the intelligence agencies of the Soviet Union. Initiated when the Soviet Union was an ally of the US, the program continued during the Cold War, when the Soviet Union was considered an enemy.

A Red Scare is a form of moral panic provoked by fear of the rise, supposed or real, of leftist ideologies in a society, especially communism. Historically, "red scares" have led to mass political persecution, scapegoating, and the ousting of those in government positions who have had connections with left-wing to far-left ideology. The name is derived from the red flag, a common symbol of communism.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Communist Party USA</span> American political party

The Communist Party USA, officially the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), is a communist party in the United States which was established in 1919 after a split in the Socialist Party of America following the Russian Revolution.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Owen Lattimore</span> American Orientalist and writer (1900–1989)

Owen Lattimore was an American Orientalist and writer. He was an influential scholar of China and Central Asia, especially Mongolia. Although he never earned a college degree, in the 1930s he was editor of Pacific Affairs, a journal published by the Institute of Pacific Relations, and taught at Johns Hopkins University from 1938 to 1963. He was director of the Walter Hines Page School of International Relations from 1939 to 1953. During World War II, he was an advisor to Chiang Kai-shek and the American government and contributed extensively to the public debate on U.S. policy toward Asia. From 1963 to 1970, Lattimore was the first Professor of Chinese Studies at the University of Leeds in England.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Earl Browder</span> American communist politician (1891–1973)

Earl Russell Browder was an American politician, spy for the Soviet Union, communist activist and leader of the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). Browder was the General Secretary of the CPUSA during the 1930s and first half of the 1940s. During World War I, Browder served time in federal prison as a conscientious objector to conscription and the war. Upon his release, Browder became an active member of the American Communist movement, soon working as an organizer on behalf of the Communist International and its Red International of Labor Unions in China and the Pacific region.

Soviet and communist studies, or simply Soviet studies, is the field of regional and historical studies on the Soviet Union and other communist states, as well as the history of communism and of the communist parties that existed or still exist in some form in many countries, both inside and outside the former Eastern Bloc, such as the Communist Party USA. Aspects of its historiography have attracted debates between historians on several topics, including totalitarianism and Cold War espionage.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Elizabeth Bentley</span> Cold War Soviet spy

Elizabeth Terrill Bentley was an American NKVD spymaster, who was recruited from within the Communist Party USA (CPUSA). She served the Soviet Union as the primary handler of multiple highly placed moles within both the United States Federal Government and the Office of Strategic Services from 1938 to 1945. She defected by contacting the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) and debriefing about her espionage activities.

Harry Magdoff was accused by a number of authors as having been complicit in Soviet espionage activity during his time in US government. He was accused of passing information to Soviet intelligence networks in the United States, primarily through what the FBI called the "Perlo Group." Magdoff was never indicted, but after the end of the Cold War, a number of scholars have inspected declassified documents from U.S. and Soviet archives. They cite these documents to support the claim that Magdoff was involved in espionage. Other authors have taken issue with some of the broader interpretations of such materials which implicate many Americans in espionage for the Soviet Union, and the allegation that Harry Magdoff was an information source for the Soviets is disputed by several academics and historians asserting that Magdoff probably had no malicious intentions and committed no crimes.

John Earl Haynes is an American historian who worked as a specialist in 20th-century political history in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. He is known for his books on the subject of the American Communist and anti-Communist movements, and on Soviet espionage in America.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Browderism</span> American variant of Marxism–Leninism

Browderism refers to the variant of Marxism–Leninism developed in the 1940s by American communist politician Earl Browder, who led the Communist Party USA (CPUSA) from 1930 to 1945. Characterized by deviations from orthodox Marxist–Leninist policies and principles, it sought to revise Marxism to align the party with mainstream American politics and present events; this involved incorporating Americanism and its nationalist values into the party's message, shifting away from the revolutionary socialism previously touted by the CPUSA. Moreover, Browderism rejected class conflict entirely, instead advocating for class collaboration with the bourgeosie under a popular front.

<i>Perjury: The Hiss–Chambers Case</i> 1978 book by Allen Weinstein

Perjury: The Hiss–Chambers Case is a 1978 book by Allen Weinstein on the Alger Hiss perjury case. The book, in which Weinstein argues that Alger Hiss was guilty, has been cited by many historians as the "most important" and the "most thorough and convincing" book on the Hiss–Chambers case. Weinstein drew upon 30,000 pages of FBI documents released through the Freedom of Information Act, the files of the Hiss defense attorneys, over 80 interviews with involved parties and six interviews with Hiss himself. In 1997, Weinstein published an updated and revised edition of Perjury, which incorporated recent evidence from Venona project decrypted cables, released documents from Soviet intelligence archives and information from former Soviet intelligence operatives.

The following is a bibliography on American Communism, listing some of the most important works on the topic.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders</span> U.S. federal prosecutions, 1949–1958

The Smith Act trials of Communist Party leaders in New York City from 1949 to 1958 were the result of US federal government prosecutions in the postwar period and during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. Leaders of the Communist Party of the United States (CPUSA) were accused of violating the Smith Act, a statute that prohibited advocating violent overthrow of the government. The defendants argued that they advocated a peaceful transition to socialism, and that the First Amendment's guarantee of freedom of speech and of association protected their membership in a political party. Appeals from these trials reached the US Supreme Court, which ruled on issues in Dennis v. United States (1951) and Yates v. United States (1957).

In American political discourse, the "loss of China" is the unexpected Chinese Communist Party coming to power in mainland China from the U.S.-backed Nationalist Chinese Kuomintang government in 1949 and therefore the "loss of China to communism."

The anti-Stalinist left is a term that refers to various kinds of Marxist political movements that oppose Joseph Stalin, Stalinism, Neo-Stalinism and the system of governance that Stalin implemented as leader of the Soviet Union between 1924 and 1953. This term also refers to the high ranking political figures and governmental programs that opposed Joseph Stalin and his form of communism, such as Leon Trotsky and other traditional Marxists within the Left Opposition. In Western historiography, Stalin is considered one of the worst and most notorious figures in modern history.

Robert William Iversen was an American historian who wrote The Communists and the Schools in 1959, which discusses the Teachers Union, Local 5 of the American Federation of Teachers in New York City; the book is often cited by scholars on academic freedom in the 20th-century United States.

Marvin E. Gettleman, was an American professor emeritus of leftist history, best known for the anthology Vietnam and America (1965).

Anti anti-communism is opposition to anti-communism as applied in the Cold War. The term was first coined by Clifford Geertz, an American anthropologist at the Institute for Advanced Study, who defined it as being applied in "the cold war days" by "those who ... regarded the [Red] Menace as the primary fact of contemporary political life" to "[t]hose of us who strenuously opposed [that] obsession, as we saw it ... with the insinuation – wildly incorrect in the vast majority of cases – that, by the law of the double negative, we had some secret affection for the Soviet Union." Stated more simply by Kristen Ghodsee and Scott Sehon, "the anthropologist Clifford Geertz wrote that you could be 'anti anti-communism' without being in favour of communism."

References

  1. ↑ "Ellen Schrecker" (Fee, via Fairfax County Public Library), Directory of American Scholars, Gale, 2002, Gale Document Number: GALE|K1612544233, retrieved 4 Sep 2011 Gale Biography In Context.
  2. 1 2 "Ellen Wolf Schrecker" (Fee, via Fairfax County Public Library), The Complete Marquis Who's Who, Marquis Who's Who, 2010, Gale Document Number: GALE|K2014955213, retrieved 4 Sep 2011 Gale Biography In Context.
  3. ↑ Radosh, Ronald (February 24, 2003). "The Truth-Spiller: Red Spy Queen: A Biography of Elizabeth Bentley (Book Review)". National Review .
  4. ↑ "Gettleman, Marvin E." New York Times. 10 January 2017. Retrieved 15 October 2018.
  5. ↑ Schrecker, Ellen (Winter 2000). "Comments on John Earl Haynes' The Cold War Debate Continues". Journal of Cold War Studies . Retrieved 2009-02-27. Emphasis in original.
  6. ↑ Haynes, John Earl. "Reflections on Ellen Schrecker and Maurice Isserman's essay, "The Right's Cold War Revision"".
  7. ↑ Jones, Shannon (24 March 1999). "Account of McCarthy period slanders socialist opponents of Stalinism". World Socialist Web Site . International Committee of the Fourth International . Retrieved 2011-09-04.
    ... her pro-Stalinist outlook and the school of anticommunism share a common premise - the claim that the Soviet regime as it developed under Stalin was the embodiment of Marxist principles.
  8. ↑ Schrecker, Ellen (February 10, 2007). "Worse Than McCarthy". The Chronicle of Higher Education .
  9. ↑ On March 2, 2006, Al-Arian, who had been kept in solitary confinement for three years while awaiting trial, accepted a plea agreement with prosecutors. He agreed to plead guilty to one count (that of misleading a reporter by shielding some of his acquaintances) out 53 counts of conspiring to help the Palestinian Islamic Jihad association, a charity founded by a former colleague of his, which in 1995 had been declared (in an executive order by President Clinton), a "specially designated terrorist" organization. Al-Arian was sentenced to 57 months in prison and ordered deported following his prison term. See Laughlin, "In His Plea Deal, What Did Sami Al-Arian Admit to?", Tampa Bay Times, April 4, 2006.
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