Drawing on previously untouched archives and dozens of personal interviews, Schrecker re-creates the climate of fear that pervaded American campuses, as the nation's educational leaders responded to the national obsession with Communism as well as their own fears about the damage that notoriety might do to the reputations of their institutions. As a result, firings occurred everywhere--at Ivy League universities, large state schools and small private colleges--and the presence of an unofficial but effective blacklist meant that most of these unfrocked professors could not find regular college teaching jobs in the U.S. until well after the McCarthyist furor had begun to subside in the 1960s.
No Ivory Tower helps to explain how the McCarthyism, which many people even then saw as a betrayal of this nation's most cherished ideals, gained so much power.
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Background Information
Joseph McCarthy was an obscure senator from Wisconsin until he discovered the power of unfounded accusations against supposed Communist sympathizers. During the McCarthy era, those in Hollywood who refused to cooperate with his committee were placed on a blacklist and found themselves unable to work in the movie industry. Higher education in America originally began to provide the Protestant churches with educated clergymen.