Rapp-Coudert Committee
Encyclopedia
The Rapp-Coudert Committee was the colloquial name of the Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate the Educational System of the State of New York — a committee of the New York State Legislature. The Rapp-Coudert Committee, which conducted its business from 1940 to 1942, sought to identify the extent of communist influence in the public education system of New York state. Its Inquiries lead to the dismissal of over 40 instructors and administrators at the City College of New York
for their political affiliations, actions deemed by critics as a political "witch-hunt
."
activities long before the establishment of the Rapp-Coudert Committee in 1940. Two decades earlier, in March 1919, the state had launched a Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate Seditious Activities, headed by Senator Clayton R. Lusk
, which had orchestrated raids to seize documents and conducted prosecutions in an effort to publicize and neutralize radical influence in the state.
In the halls of Congress, New York representative Hamilton Fish III
had chaired a Congressional investigative committee which in 1930 took and published extensive testimony on communism
in America, a matter which Fish deemed ""the most important, the most vital, the most far-reaching, and the most dangerous issue in the world."
New York City
, with its massive size and extensive immigrant population, was the headquarters of the Communist Party USA
, save for a handful of years in the middle 1920s when the party moved to Chicago
, and a focal point for American communist activity.
, headed by Adolf Hitler
, and the Soviet Union
, headed by Joseph Stalin
, American Communists moved as one from vocal public opposition to fascism
as part of a broad Popular Front
to advocacy of non-intervention in the erupting European conflict, characterizing the fight between Germany and Britain as an "imperialist war" of little import to the American working class.
This almost instantaneous shift of fundamental policy views of American Communists was seen by many as indicative that the CPUSA was a disciplined organization owing its allegiance to the foreign policy exigencies of an aggressive foreign power, the Soviet Union. With war in Europe now foremost in the public consciousness, the longstanding anti-communist orientation of many political leaders gained new urgency and a mini-Red Scare
gripped the public.
In April 1940, the New York State Legislature voted to establish a new investigative body, the Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate the Educational System of the State of New York, given the task of publicizing the Communist Party's influence in the publicly-funded higher educational bodies of the state. The committee was patterned after the House Un-American Activities Committee
, a special committee chaired by Martin Dies
of Texas
. The so-called "Dies Committee" was the successor to the Fish Committee of 1930 and forerunner of the House standing committee
on un-American activities which was to gain fame and notoriety in the years after World War II
.
The new investigative committee came to be known as the "Rapp-Coudert Committee" after its chairmen, Republican Assemblyman Herbert A. Rapp (1891-1964), of Genesee County
, and Republican State Senator Frederic René Coudert, Jr.
(1898-1972), a lawyer from New York City.
The Rapp-Coudert was one of four states establishing "little Dies Committees," being joined by California
, Oklahoma
, and Texas
in that distinction. In addition, by 1940 some 21 American states had passed legislation requiring loyalty oath
s for teachers.
, City College of New York
, Hunter College
, and Queens College. Primary attention was placed on the state of affairs at City College, the oldest, largest, and best know of the four New York schools. In all more than 500 faculty, staff, and students of New York's universities were subpeonaed
and interrogated during the course of the investigation.
The Rapp-Coudert Committee's investigation was carried out by a subcommittee headed by Senator Coudert, making use of the New York City's former corporation counsel, Paul Windels, as committee counsel. The choice of the widely respected and high profile Windels, himself a partisan Republican, was intended to lend instant legitimacy and credibility to the controversial work of the committee.
Those called to give testimony by the committee were interrogated at private hearings. They were not allowed legal counsel, the right to cross-examine other witnesses, or even to maintain transcripts of the proceedings. Only one indictment was ever sought by the committee from a grand jury
, with Morris U. Schappes indicted, tried, and convicted of perjury in 1941 for his testimony before the Rapp-Coudert Committee.
While the committee did not itself have the power to terminate instructors implicated as members of the Communist Party in its hearings, it did serve as an impetus to force the New York Board of Higher Education into action. As the committee's work gained increasing public notoriety, the initially resistant Board of Education began to yield to public pressure, resolving itself in November 1940 to fully cooperate with the investigation. Legal advice was sought from the city's current corporation counsel, W.C. Chanler, who advised that teachers refusing to testify before the committee stood in defiance of the Board's policy directive to cooperate and were thus subject to dismissal.
After hearing extensive testimony, in 1942 the Rapp-Coudert Committee made its report to the New York State Legislature. The committee boasted that it had "exposed" 69 instructors as Communists and gathered additional evidence implicating as radicals another 434 members of the faculty and staff of New York City's college system. While there were no laws banning Americans from membership in the Communist Party, the committee argued that the mere fact of membership indicated that an individual was under the improper discipline of an external conspiratorial power, and thus stood unfit to work in publc schools or colleges.
In Spring 1941, this opinion was given the force of official policy, when the New York Board of Higher Education prohibited membership of teachers and staff in the Communist Party USA. Refusing to testify before the committee was already a firing offense, giving false testimony to the committee made one subject to perjury, and admission of membership in the Communist Party likewise served as grounds for immediate termination.
The committee's method was to gather accusations from friendly, cooperating witnesses concentrating on Communist Party membership status. One of the committee's chief informers was William Canning, a former member of the Communist Party who taught at Brooklyn College. Avidly anti-communist after leaving the CPUSA, Canning bore witness against 54 others for alleged Communist Party ties.
No charge was ever related to instances of misconduct as a teacher. Historian Stephen Leberstein has neatly summarized the dilemma facing the accused:
, and the English tutor Morris U. Schappes.
In all, over 40 teachers and staff members lost their jobs in the early 1940s on account of their political affiliation with the Communist Party or for refusal to cooperate with the legislative inquiry into the same.
In October 1981, more than four decades after the launch of the Rapp-Coudert Committee, the dismissed employees won a small measure of vindication when the City University Board of Trustees passed a resolution expressing "profound regret at the injustice done to former colleagues on the faculty and staff of the university" who were fired or forced to resign for their political affiliations. A reception was held for the surviving victims and their families on December 17, 1981, hosted by City College of New York President Bernard Harleston.
Unpublished documents of the Rapp-Coudert Committee reside at the New York State Archives
in Albany
. Rapp-Coudert Committee counsel Paul Windels left an oral record of his activities with the committee as part of the Columbia University
Oral History Research Project in New York City. Morris Schappes’s experiences with the Rapp-Coudert Committee are documented in Schappes’s personal papers at the American Jewish Historical Society
in New York and the Tamiment Library of New York University.
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
for their political affiliations, actions deemed by critics as a political "witch-hunt
Witch-hunt
A witch-hunt is a search for witches or evidence of witchcraft, often involving moral panic, mass hysteria and lynching, but in historical instances also legally sanctioned and involving official witchcraft trials...
."
Predecessors
The government of the state of New York had a long record of activity in the investigation of alleged seditiousSedition
In law, sedition is overt conduct, such as speech and organization, that is deemed by the legal authority to tend toward insurrection against the established order. Sedition often includes subversion of a constitution and incitement of discontent to lawful authority. Sedition may include any...
activities long before the establishment of the Rapp-Coudert Committee in 1940. Two decades earlier, in March 1919, the state had launched a Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate Seditious Activities, headed by Senator Clayton R. Lusk
Clayton R. Lusk
Clayton Riley Lusk was an American lawyer and politician from New York. He is now mostly remembered as Chairman of the "Lusk Committee", and was Acting Lieutenant Governor of New York in 1922....
, which had orchestrated raids to seize documents and conducted prosecutions in an effort to publicize and neutralize radical influence in the state.
In the halls of Congress, New York representative Hamilton Fish III
Hamilton Fish III
Hamilton Fish III was a soldier and politician from New York State...
had chaired a Congressional investigative committee which in 1930 took and published extensive testimony on communism
Communism
Communism is a social, political and economic ideology that aims at the establishment of a classless, moneyless, revolutionary and stateless socialist society structured upon common ownership of the means of production...
in America, a matter which Fish deemed ""the most important, the most vital, the most far-reaching, and the most dangerous issue in the world."
New York City
New York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
, with its massive size and extensive immigrant population, was the headquarters of the Communist Party USA
Communist Party USA
The Communist Party USA is a Marxist political party in the United States, established in 1919. It has a long, complex history that is closely related to the histories of similar communist parties worldwide and the U.S. labor movement....
, save for a handful of years in the middle 1920s when the party moved to Chicago
Chicago
Chicago is the largest city in the US state of Illinois. With nearly 2.7 million residents, it is the most populous city in the Midwestern United States and the third most populous in the US, after New York City and Los Angeles...
, and a focal point for American communist activity.
Establishment
The abrupt flip-flop of the American Communist Party line following the signing of the Nazi-Soviet Pact of 1939 thrust the role and influence of the roughly 60,000 member organization into the public eye. Within days after the signing of the political agreement between Nazi GermanyNazi Germany
Nazi Germany , also known as the Third Reich , but officially called German Reich from 1933 to 1943 and Greater German Reich from 26 June 1943 onward, is the name commonly used to refer to the state of Germany from 1933 to 1945, when it was a totalitarian dictatorship ruled by...
, headed by Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler
Adolf Hitler was an Austrian-born German politician and the leader of the National Socialist German Workers Party , commonly referred to as the Nazi Party). He was Chancellor of Germany from 1933 to 1945, and head of state from 1934 to 1945...
, and the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
, headed by Joseph Stalin
Joseph Stalin
Joseph Vissarionovich Stalin was the Premier of the Soviet Union from 6 May 1941 to 5 March 1953. He was among the Bolshevik revolutionaries who brought about the October Revolution and had held the position of first General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union's Central Committee...
, American Communists moved as one from vocal public opposition to fascism
Fascism
Fascism is a radical authoritarian nationalist political ideology. Fascists seek to rejuvenate their nation based on commitment to the national community as an organic entity, in which individuals are bound together in national identity by suprapersonal connections of ancestry, culture, and blood...
as part of a broad Popular Front
Popular front
A popular front is a broad coalition of different political groupings, often made up of leftists and centrists. Being very broad, they can sometimes include centrist and liberal forces as well as socialist and communist groups...
to advocacy of non-intervention in the erupting European conflict, characterizing the fight between Germany and Britain as an "imperialist war" of little import to the American working class.
This almost instantaneous shift of fundamental policy views of American Communists was seen by many as indicative that the CPUSA was a disciplined organization owing its allegiance to the foreign policy exigencies of an aggressive foreign power, the Soviet Union. With war in Europe now foremost in the public consciousness, the longstanding anti-communist orientation of many political leaders gained new urgency and a mini-Red Scare
Red Scare
Durrell Blackwell Durrell Blackwell The term Red Scare denotes two distinct periods of strong Anti-Communism in the United States: the First Red Scare, from 1919 to 1920, and the Second Red Scare, from 1947 to 1957. The First Red Scare was about worker revolution and...
gripped the public.
In April 1940, the New York State Legislature voted to establish a new investigative body, the Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate the Educational System of the State of New York, given the task of publicizing the Communist Party's influence in the publicly-funded higher educational bodies of the state. The committee was patterned after the House Un-American Activities Committee
House Un-American Activities Committee
The House Committee on Un-American Activities or House Un-American Activities Committee was an investigative committee of the United States House of Representatives. In 1969, the House changed the committee's name to "House Committee on Internal Security"...
, a special committee chaired by Martin Dies
Martin Dies
Martin Dies was a Texas politician and a Democratic member of the United States House of Representatives. His son, Martin Dies, Jr. was also a member of the United States House of Representatives....
of Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
. The so-called "Dies Committee" was the successor to the Fish Committee of 1930 and forerunner of the House standing committee
Standing Committee
In the United States Congress, standing committees are permanent legislative panels established by the United States House of Representatives and United States Senate rules. . Because they have legislative jurisdiction, standing committees consider bills and issues and recommend measures for...
on un-American activities which was to gain fame and notoriety in the years after World War II
World War II
World War II, or the Second World War , was a global conflict lasting from 1939 to 1945, involving most of the world's nations—including all of the great powers—eventually forming two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis...
.
The new investigative committee came to be known as the "Rapp-Coudert Committee" after its chairmen, Republican Assemblyman Herbert A. Rapp (1891-1964), of Genesee County
Genesee County, New York
Genesee County is a county located in Western New York, United States. As of the 2010 census, the population was 60,079. Its name is from the Seneca Indian word Gen-nis'-hee-yo meaning "The Beautiful Valley." Its county seat is Batavia.- History :...
, and Republican State Senator Frederic René Coudert, Jr.
Frederic René Coudert, Jr.
Frederic René Coudert Jr. ; born, died in New York City) was a Representative from New York.-Background:Coudert attended Browning and Morristown Schools in New York City, then graduated from Columbia University in 1918 and from its law school in 1922...
(1898-1972), a lawyer from New York City.
The Rapp-Coudert was one of four states establishing "little Dies Committees," being joined by California
California
California is a state located on the West Coast of the United States. It is by far the most populous U.S. state, and the third-largest by land area...
, Oklahoma
Oklahoma
Oklahoma is a state located in the South Central region of the United States of America. With an estimated 3,751,351 residents as of the 2010 census and a land area of 68,667 square miles , Oklahoma is the 28th most populous and 20th-largest state...
, and Texas
Texas
Texas is the second largest U.S. state by both area and population, and the largest state by area in the contiguous United States.The name, based on the Caddo word "Tejas" meaning "friends" or "allies", was applied by the Spanish to the Caddo themselves and to the region of their settlement in...
in that distinction. In addition, by 1940 some 21 American states had passed legislation requiring loyalty oath
Loyalty oath
A loyalty oath is an oath of loyalty to an organization, institution, or state of which an individual is a member.In this context, a loyalty oath is distinct from pledge or oath of allegiance...
s for teachers.
Activities
The Rapp-Coudert Committee held its hearings from September 1940 to December 1942, focusing on New York City's four public universities — Brooklyn CollegeBrooklyn College
Brooklyn College is a senior college of the City University of New York, located in Brooklyn, New York, United States.Established in 1930 by the New York City Board of Higher Education, the College had its beginnings as the Downtown Brooklyn branches of Hunter College and the City College of New...
, City College of New York
City College of New York
The City College of the City University of New York is a senior college of the City University of New York , in New York City. It is also the oldest of the City University's twenty-three institutions of higher learning...
, Hunter College
Hunter College
Hunter College, established in 1870, is a public university and one of the constituent colleges of the City University of New York, located on Manhattan's Upper East Side. Hunter grants undergraduate, graduate, and post-graduate degrees in more than one hundred fields of study, and is recognized...
, and Queens College. Primary attention was placed on the state of affairs at City College, the oldest, largest, and best know of the four New York schools. In all more than 500 faculty, staff, and students of New York's universities were subpeonaed
Subpoena
A subpoena is a writ by a government agency, most often a court, that has authority to compel testimony by a witness or production of evidence under a penalty for failure. There are two common types of subpoena:...
and interrogated during the course of the investigation.
The Rapp-Coudert Committee's investigation was carried out by a subcommittee headed by Senator Coudert, making use of the New York City's former corporation counsel, Paul Windels, as committee counsel. The choice of the widely respected and high profile Windels, himself a partisan Republican, was intended to lend instant legitimacy and credibility to the controversial work of the committee.
Those called to give testimony by the committee were interrogated at private hearings. They were not allowed legal counsel, the right to cross-examine other witnesses, or even to maintain transcripts of the proceedings. Only one indictment was ever sought by the committee from a grand jury
Grand jury
A grand jury is a type of jury that determines whether a criminal indictment will issue. Currently, only the United States retains grand juries, although some other common law jurisdictions formerly employed them, and most other jurisdictions employ some other type of preliminary hearing...
, with Morris U. Schappes indicted, tried, and convicted of perjury in 1941 for his testimony before the Rapp-Coudert Committee.
While the committee did not itself have the power to terminate instructors implicated as members of the Communist Party in its hearings, it did serve as an impetus to force the New York Board of Higher Education into action. As the committee's work gained increasing public notoriety, the initially resistant Board of Education began to yield to public pressure, resolving itself in November 1940 to fully cooperate with the investigation. Legal advice was sought from the city's current corporation counsel, W.C. Chanler, who advised that teachers refusing to testify before the committee stood in defiance of the Board's policy directive to cooperate and were thus subject to dismissal.
After hearing extensive testimony, in 1942 the Rapp-Coudert Committee made its report to the New York State Legislature. The committee boasted that it had "exposed" 69 instructors as Communists and gathered additional evidence implicating as radicals another 434 members of the faculty and staff of New York City's college system. While there were no laws banning Americans from membership in the Communist Party, the committee argued that the mere fact of membership indicated that an individual was under the improper discipline of an external conspiratorial power, and thus stood unfit to work in publc schools or colleges.
In Spring 1941, this opinion was given the force of official policy, when the New York Board of Higher Education prohibited membership of teachers and staff in the Communist Party USA. Refusing to testify before the committee was already a firing offense, giving false testimony to the committee made one subject to perjury, and admission of membership in the Communist Party likewise served as grounds for immediate termination.
The committee's method was to gather accusations from friendly, cooperating witnesses concentrating on Communist Party membership status. One of the committee's chief informers was William Canning, a former member of the Communist Party who taught at Brooklyn College. Avidly anti-communist after leaving the CPUSA, Canning bore witness against 54 others for alleged Communist Party ties.
No charge was ever related to instances of misconduct as a teacher. Historian Stephen Leberstein has neatly summarized the dilemma facing the accused:
"With the complicity of board and college officials, the committee was then able to have fired the faculty and staff members who it believed were Communists on the grounds of conduct unbecoming a member of the staff — that is, either non-cooperation with a legislative committee or perjury. Prohibiting teachers from belonging to the party meant that the suspects could be dismissed either for admitting their membership or for denying it if two cooperating witnesses were available to prove perjury. Faced with the committee's deus ex machina, the accused were at a loss for determining how to resist."
Dismissals
By the end of 1942, 19 individuals had been dismissed from City College of New York alone, with another 7 handing in their resignations on their own. Other cases remained pending at the end of the year. Among those affected were the brothers Philip S. Foner and Jack D. FonerJack D. Foner
Jack Donald Foner was an American historian best known for writing histories of the labor movement and the struggle for civil rights. He was born in Brooklyn, New York. A professor of American history, he established one of the first programs in black studies in the United States...
, and the English tutor Morris U. Schappes.
In all, over 40 teachers and staff members lost their jobs in the early 1940s on account of their political affiliation with the Communist Party or for refusal to cooperate with the legislative inquiry into the same.
End of the committee and its legacy
The first serious academic study of the Rapp-Coudert Committee was conducted in the early 1950s by Lawrence Chamberlain, a political centrist who was granted access to the private papers of Frederic R. Coudert. Chamberlain held those dismissed in high scholarly esteem:
"No one can read through the verbatim testimony...without being impressed with the generally superior character of the group here under scrutiny. There seems no doubt from evidence presented elsewhere that some of the group were Communists, but the impressive and inescapable fact is that the only evidence presented by either side points to: (1) outstanding scholarship, (2) superior teaching, (3) absence of indoctrination in the classroom."
In October 1981, more than four decades after the launch of the Rapp-Coudert Committee, the dismissed employees won a small measure of vindication when the City University Board of Trustees passed a resolution expressing "profound regret at the injustice done to former colleagues on the faculty and staff of the university" who were fired or forced to resign for their political affiliations. A reception was held for the surviving victims and their families on December 17, 1981, hosted by City College of New York President Bernard Harleston.
Unpublished documents of the Rapp-Coudert Committee reside at the New York State Archives
New York State Archives
The New York State Archives is a unit of the Office of Cultural Education within the New York State Education Department, with its main facility located in the Cultural Education Center on Madison Avenue in Albany, New York, United States...
in Albany
Albany, New York
Albany is the capital city of the U.S. state of New York, the seat of Albany County, and the central city of New York's Capital District. Roughly north of New York City, Albany sits on the west bank of the Hudson River, about south of its confluence with the Mohawk River...
. Rapp-Coudert Committee counsel Paul Windels left an oral record of his activities with the committee as part of the Columbia University
Columbia University
Columbia University in the City of New York is a private, Ivy League university in Manhattan, New York City. Columbia is the oldest institution of higher learning in the state of New York, the fifth oldest in the United States, and one of the country's nine Colonial Colleges founded before the...
Oral History Research Project in New York City. Morris Schappes’s experiences with the Rapp-Coudert Committee are documented in Schappes’s personal papers at the American Jewish Historical Society
American Jewish Historical Society
The American Jewish Historical Society was founded in 1892 with the mission to foster awareness and appreciation of the American Jewish heritage and to serve as a national scholarly resource for research through the collection, preservation and dissemination of materials relating to American...
in New York and the Tamiment Library of New York University.
Further reading
- David Caute, The Great Fear: The Anti-Communist Purge Under Truman and Eisenhower. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1978.
- Stephen Leberstein, "Purging the Profs: The Rapp Coudert Committee in New York, 1940-1942," in Michael E. Brown et al. (eds.), New Studies in the Politics and Culture of US Communism. New York: Monthly Review Press, 1993; pp. 91-122.
- Louis Lerman, Winter Soldiers: The Story of a Conspiracy Against the Schools. New York: NY Committee for the Defense of Public Education, 1941.
- New York State Legislature, Report of the Sub-committee Relative to the Public Education System of the City of New York. New York Legislative Documents, 165th Session, vol. 10, no. 48, 1942.
- Ellen Schrecker, No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities. New York: Oxford University Press, 1986.
- Carol Smith, "The Dress Rehearsal for McCarthyism," Academe Online, July-August 2011.
- Clarence Taylor, Reds at the Blackboard: Communism, Civil Rights, and the New York City Teachers Union. New York: Columbia University Press, 2011.