University of Michigan. Academic Freedom Lecture Fund.

In 1955, during the height of the McCarthy era, the University of Michigan suspended professors H. Chandler Davis, Clement Markert, and Mark Nickerson for their refusal to give testimony before a U.S. House Committee on Un-American Activities panel. Davis and Nickerson (a tenured professor) were terminated. Markert was later reinstated. The national American Association of University Professors (AAUP) censured the university for its treatment of these professors in 1957. After a new Regents’ Bylaw (5.09) was adopted, censure was removed in 1958.

In 1988, emeritus professor Wilbert J. McKeachie published an article, “Reminiscences of the 1950’s,” in the University of Michigan AAUP Chapter Newsletter that detailed the treatment of Davis, Markert and Nickerson at Michigan during the 1950s. David Hollinger, a history professor, also wrote an account of those events for the 1988 Centennial Celebration Bulletin of the Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studies. Those accounts prompted student Adam Kulakow to prepare a video documentary on the Davis, Markert, Nickerson cases for his undergraduate honors dissertation. Kulakow’s documentary, Keeping in Mind - The McCarthy Era at the University of Michigan, was shown publicly on April 9, 1989, to a large audience that included the three professors.

Following the presentation of Keeping in Mind, a member of the audience suggested that the university be asked to make amends for its treatment of the three professors in 1955. The University of Michigan Chapter of the AAUP pursued the matter, hoping to encourage the Regents to take appropriate action. A proposal was sent to the Senate Advisory Committee on University Affairs (SACUA) in October 1989. The proposal was endorsed in February 1990 by the Senate Assembly. When the Regents did not take action, the Senate Assembly passed a resolution in November 1990 that deeply regretted “the failure of the University Community to protect the values of intellectual freedom” in 1955. The resolution also established the annual University of Michigan Senate’s Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom. The first lecture was given on February 18, 1991. The three professors were present and participated in a panel discussion after the lecture.

The Senate Assembly established an Academic Freedom Lecture Fund (AFLF) to encourage and support the academic freedom lectures. AFLF was subsequently established as an independent non-profit organization in 1991. The goal of the AFLF being, to support public lectures on academic freedom wherever they might be given.

Source: Program for the University of Michigan’s Davis, Markert, Nickerson Symposium on Academic Freedom, October 7, 2000. Also available online at the following URL: http://www.umich.edu/~aflf

From the guide to the Academic Freedom Lecture Fund (University of Michigan), Records, 2000-ongoing, (Bentley Historical Library, University of Michigan)