Three manila folders housing typed and hand-written documents, reports, invoices, and testimonies regarding the Red Scare at MIT, released by the State House of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts' Special Commission on Communism and Subversive Activities, which was modeled after the House Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC). Quarto size, most 8 1/2 x 11 inches. Loose documents housed in three blank manila folders. Documents held together with staples, paperclips, and brads. Scattered handling wear, light soiling and toning, overall excellent. [Cambridge/Boston, Massachusetts]: 1955-1957.

The post-World War II Red Scare, also known by the nickname "McCarthyism", coincided with a widespread fear of communist spies and American traitors as a result of the increasing tensions from the Cold War. The House Committee on Un-American Activities (HUAC) was originally created in 1938 to investigate disloyalty and suspected subversive activity, and became a standing committee in 1946. During the Red Scare, the HUAC aggressively targeted individuals working in Hollywood, government, and education. There were (unfounded) suspicions of communist subversion among teachers and professors, and the National Council for American Education was founded in 1946 by far-right activist Allen Zoll in order to "eradicate Socialism, Communism, and all forms of Marxism from the schools and colleges of America." Zoll and his group "pumped out a steady stream of pamphlets: 'How Red Are the Schools?', 'Progressive Education Increases Delinquency', 'They Want Your Child', 'Red-ucators at Harvard'...Many of the same people who went after elementary and high-school teachers soon opened a second front against professors on college campuses...By the 1950s, more than a dozen states had barred Communists from teaching at public colleges and universities, as had scores of private colleges. Almost every state instituted some form of loyalty oath." ("When America Persecutes Its Teachers: The Red Scare in Schools", Clay Risen, The Atlantic, March 4, 2025)

MIT was not immune to these accusations and attacks. A major focus of this group of documents is Dutch-born mathematics professor Dirk Jan Struik. According to an article in the MIT Technology Review, "When MIT hired the Dutch mathematician Dirk Jan Struik in 1926, it got an accomplished geometer...and a budding historian. But the Institute also got an outspoken Marxist - a seemingly insignificant fact that would become a very big deal 25 years later." Struik found himself accused of revolutionary activity during a 1949 trial, but defended himself by calling himself "a Marxist in the broadest sense" who "taught only mathematics at MIT, never political ideology." MIT supported him, but on July 24, 1951, Struik was called before the HUAC, and on September 12, 1951, he was indicted by a Middlesex County grand jury for "conspiracy to overthrow the governments of the United States and Massachusetts, and for advocating the overthrow by violence of the government of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts." He was suspended without pay, and after several years and various ups and downs with the case, it was eventually thrown out in 1956 and Struik was allowed to continue teaching. ("How an MIT Marxist weathered the Red Scare", Simson Garfinkel, MIT Technology Review, June 29, 2022)

Included in this group of documents is an extensive 24-page report on Struik from January 1957, which presents the case against Struik, testimonies given against him as being a member of the Communist Party, and a conclusion which reads, "Professor Dirk J. Struik has been lacking in candor and forthrightness in discussions with his colleagues and the Institute Administration, that he has been intellectually dishonest in concealing his connection with the Communist Party and hypocritical in statements which are utterly at odds with academic freedom." This report names Herbert A. Philbrick, the FBI double agent who infiltrated the Communist Party as a spy and broke cover in April 1949 to testify against 11 Communist leaders indicted by his evidence.

There is also an 8-page report on Reverend Donald G. Lothrop of the Community Church of Boston, which claims that the Church and Lothrop had been "a great source of aid and comfort through the years to the Communist Party," and "has been the stout champion in Boston of well known members of the Communist Party, and the fringe organizations which they have successfully infiltrated." This report makes mention of John Spivak, the Communist reporter, whose goal the report claims was "to divert attention from investigation of Communism, and to provide sensational publicity."

Additional typed and handwritten reports, some in multiple copies, mention known activist and Communist Party member Homer Bates Chase and his family members, Frances Briggs Allen Hood and her husband Otis Archer Hood, Wolger Washington Johnson, Myer Klarfeld, Harold Lester Lewengrub, Alice Lerner Mills, Betty Roland, Pearl Russo, and others, with addresses, birthdates, and other personal details. There is also a list of 'known delegates' to the District One Communist Convention, most of which are the same names from the prior-mentioned reports, as well as minutes from that convention meeting which included election of delegates to the National Convention of the Communist Party.

Another figure profiled within these documents is Gloucester-based artist, etcher, and engraver Kalman Kubinyi and his wife, Doris Hall Kubinyi, stating Kalman was a witness in executive session on April 18, 1956 and refused to state whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party, that he falsified a statement regarding his membership when being employed to work on WPA projects, and that he was opposed to the execution of Ethel and Julilus Rosenberg. Similar things were said of his wife, Doris, including that the acted as manager of the Modern Book Store, which was the Communist Party Book Store in Cleveland.

A lengthy 57-page document represents the sworn testimony of the anti-communist and CIA-backed professor of Economic History and Director of the Center for International Studies at MIT, Walter Rostow. In his testimony, he states that he believes the International Fur & Leather Workers Union of the United States and Canada has been used to "serve the purposes of International Communism".

The remainder of the documents is comprised mainly by copies of the aforementioned documents, some pages from commission reports, and invoices from the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for the Special Commission on Communism, for general office work, proofreading, etc.

A fascinating collection of great historical importance from a tumultuous time in American history.

Book ID: 53653

Price: $2,500.00