No loyalty oaths, please

Submitted by Marian Hennings (United States), Jan 7, 2003 at 11:45

Although I deplore the current tendency of some on campus to encourage panArabism, I certainly don't want to go back to the days of blacklists and loyalty oaths. Self-criticism is a worthwhile endeavor, as long as it does not involve self-flagellation. I think some professors have stepped over the dividing line and assume that U.S. support of an idea, person, or government, must be wrong. Balance is needed in academia, as well as elsewhere. The opposite extreme is just as bad. I can recall arguing with my grade school teacher in the 1950s that Franco was not our friend just because Spain was a member of NATO and that Chiang Kai-shek was a dictator, even though attempts were made in public schools to indoctrinate children to believe that Franco and Chiang were our friends because they were both anti-Communist. Any criticism of U.S. policy was considered traitorous. Many current professors grew up in an environment similar to the one I just described, which may account for their supposed anti-American beliefs.

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