February 23, 2005
My Oath of Allegiance
"I solemnly swear that I will uphold the constitution of the United States and the constitution of the State of Colorado, and I will faithfully perform the duties of the position I am about to enter."
As deemed necessary by the state of Colorado, this is the oath I am expected to sign (in front of a notary) by Friday.
When I first saw the form, I was convinced it was an elaborate practical joke. Are we German Staatsbeamter (state officials) required to swear fealty to the state or are we college instructors? By what logic are we in a position to mar the Constitution more than any ordinary citizen?
It seems that the oath is required by state law (I suppose I signed it when I first came on--I can scarcely remember) and someone discovered that Ward Churchill's oath is missing. The fact that some faculty members don't have the oath on file is now being used as justification for forcing all of us to sign it this week. Perhaps they though Ward Churchill won't sign it—but he did.
The University of Colorado has been humiliated enough—from the shenanigans of the College Republicans (they put up a website where you can record every 'offensive' comment made by a teacher) to athletic sex scandals to the latest and greatest--Ward Churchill's idiotic remarks on 9/11 (and the equally idiotic media hysteria).
Now the state wants us to sign (or resign) a loyalty oath. How can the university hope to recruit significant scholars in the humanities and the social sciences—liberal or conservative—in this sort of climate? I suppose the State Legislature could care less about such matters--they've already slashed funding to the point where this university is (officially) no longer a state but an “enterprise” institution. Tuition is going through the roof. This being the case, why bother trying to lure accomplished scholars?
Yet major donors are bound to eventually grasp that state interference isn't going to help the university's efforts to maintain a top program in physics--as it is essential to recruit talent from Europe and the East Coast who generally have progressive opinions and might be scared of the increasingly McCarthyite atmosphere (coming from both the right and the left). One imagines that East Coast and European scholars find the University’s lack of power in the face of legislative ignorance highly amusing, and somewhat disturbing.
Ultimately, it’s not a big deal--the oath is meaningless. It's more ridiculous than anything else. I only hope the humiliations end here, for the sake of the faculty remaining.
I had to sign a loyalty oath when I accepted a "faculty" job in New York state. I was offended that I would be required to do so and investigated.
Loyalty oaths were deemed constitutional by the US Supreme Court so long as the language contained within them is not overly restrictive. Loyalty Oaths are a product of the McCarthy Era Red Scare. And they are completely ineffective as guarrantors of loyalty but completely effective at asserting state interference in employment.
That said, teachers and university faculty are not the only ones who sign these things. I remember reading that hair dressers in Arizona were required to sign one as a condition of obtaining a beautician's license.
Sean is (mostly) right that many of these loyalty oaths were challenged in the Supreme Court during the 1950s and 60s (the "Red Scare" was right after the first world war, about 1918 to 1921). Many, if not most, of the oaths back then applied to all state employees and dealt with membership in various organizations.
Anyway, they are generally constitutional if they are not vague, uncertain, or overbroad. While looking into this, I came across Justice Frankfurter's concurrance in Wieman v. Updegraff, 344 U.S. 183, 198 (1952). The Justice passionatly agreed with the majority's decision that struck down an Oklahoma statute that required a membership-type oath on Due Process grounds, and further discussed the "chilling" effect that such statutes have on free speech:
To regard teachers--in our entire educational system, from the primary grades to the university--as the priests of our democracy is therefore not to indulge in hyperbole. It is the special task of teachers to foster those habits of open-mindedness and critical inquiry which alone make for responsible citizens, who, in turn, make possible an enlightened and effective public opinion. Teachers must fulfill their function by precept and practice, by the very atmosphere which they generate; they must be exemplars of open-mindedness and free inquiry. They cannot carry out their noble task if the conditions for the practice of a responsible and critical mind are denied to them. They must have the freedom of responsible inquiry, by thought and action, into the meaning of social and economic ideas, into the checkered history of social and economic dogma. They must be free to sift evanescent doctrine, qualified by time and circumstance, from that restless, enduring process of extending the bounds of understanding and wisdom, to assure which the freedoms of thought, of speech, of inquiry, of worship are guaranteed by the Constitution of the United States against infraction by National or State government.
You're obviously planning on corrupting the youth of tomorrow with your radical lefist agenda. If you have nothing to hide, why do you resist the oath? Ergo, you are disloyal through even voicing doubt.
It is not for the student to learn from the teacher what to think, but rather for the teacher to challenge the student to think. It is up for the student to think for herself.
That at least is my philosophy of teaching. At least I don't live in Ohio, where if you disagreed with me you could (possibly in the future) sue me.
-mostly right
I agree with that sentiment.
Oh, and sorry about the "mostly" bit--at least you didn't misspell "passionately." :)