Michael McGiffert was a student at Union Theological Seminary during the 1949-1950 academic year, and he played an important role in the organization and convening of the Conference on Democracy in Education (CDE) along with his then-wife, Elizabeth McGiffert. The CDE was originally scheduled to be held in December 1949 at Columbia University, but the organizers were denied space, apparently because of the alleged Communist affiliations of its original organizers. The conference was eventually held at Midwood High School (adjacent to Brooklyn College) on March 11-12, 1950, and was attended by over 400 student and youth delegates from the NYC area. In the interim, control of the conference organizing process had passed to a collection of liberals, socialists and Trotskyists, with Roger Baldwin giving the keynote address. There were three panels, each dealing with an issue in higher education: economic problems, discrimination, and academic freedom. A fourth panel/topic, militarism and the Cold War, appears to have been dropped as the political complexion of the conference evolved. While the CDE was conceived as an ongoing entity, political differences led to the executive committee's decision, on May 20, 1950, to dissolve the Conference.
From the guide to the Conference on Democracy in Education Records, Bulk, 1949-1950, 1949-2000, (Bulk 1949-1950), (Tamiment Library / Wagner Archives)
