It is interesting get this e-mail. I'm going through the letters now
when Ken Galbraith was asked a number of questions by what was called
the "Employee Loyalty Program" from the Department of Commerce in
1950. It appears that if anyone had worked or had done any consulting
for a government agency, (which included attending a conference where
the government paid for travel to the conference) the "Loyalty Board"
had a right to ask you to submit a notarized response to any question
they might have of your affiliation or "sympathetic" association with
any "foreign or domestic organizations or persons as totalitarian,
fascist, communist, or subversive…" Ken was asked to respond if he
knew Corliss Lamont, E. Johnston Coil or Martin Popper. He was also
asked to provide names of those he believed were in "sympathetic
association" with the Communist Party. Given that many economists had
or were doing work for the Federal government right after the war this
meant that many of them were subject to such questions that could
influence their careers. The response of the board of who it would
question, in many cases, was from "certain information of a derogatory
nature with respect to you…" What an ugly time. So it wouldn't
surprise me about some Chicago economists being asked to testify.
Ric Holt


On Mon, Aug 4, 2014 at 2:32 PM, E. Roy Weintraub <[log in to unmask]> wrote:
> Anatol Rapoport's autobiography states that Senator Albert Jenner's Internal
> Activities Subcommittee came to the University of Chicago looking for
> communists in 1953, two years after Hutchins left. Several faculty were
> fired. is there a record of any Chicago economists being called to testify?
> Are there records of any of them being interviewed by the FBI or the
> Subcommittee about "communist tendencies" or "communist sympathies" among
> colleagues?
>
> --------
> E. Roy Weintraub
> Professor of Economics
> Fellow, Center for the History of Political Economy
> Duke University
> www.econ.duke.edu/~erw/erw.homepage.html
>
>