From ‘A Book, an Idea and a Goat,’ Andru Volinsky’s weekly newsletter on Substack is primarily devoted to writing about the national movement for fair school funding and other means of effecting social change. Here’s the link: https://substack.com/@andruvolinsky?utm_source=profile-page
By ANDRU VOLINSKY
In a letter to the Guardian newspaper last week, Professor Rashid Khalidi explained why he is withdrawing his upcoming lecture on modern Middle East history: “It is impossible to teach this course (and much else) in light of Columbia’s adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance (IHRA) definition of antisemitism. The IHRA definition deliberately, mendaciously and disingenuously conflates Jewishness with Israel, so that any criticism of Israel, or indeed description of Israeli policies, becomes a criticism of Jews.”
In the name of cracking down on antisemitism at Columbia, the university agreed to appoint “a vice-provost initially tasked with surveilling Middle Eastern studies, and it has ordained that faculty and staff must submit to ‘trainings’ on antisemitism . . . It has accepted an ‘independent’ monitor of ‘compliance’ of faculty and student behavior [who] will have timely access to interview all Agreement-related individuals, and visit all Agreement-related facilities, trainings, transcripts of Agreement-related meetings and disciplinary hearings, and reviews. Classrooms are pointedly NOT excluded from possible visits from these external non academics.”
Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2025
Sadly, three of our four federal representatives are co-sponsors of the Antisemitism Awareness Act of 2025 that directs Trump’s Department of Education to adopt the IHRA definition that conflates criticism of Israel with being anti-Jewish. Senator Shaheen is not a co-sponsor. As adjunct faculty at UNH, the Antisemitism Awareness Act would require the university to punish me for condemning the state of Israel’s starvation of children in Gaza, which I wholeheartedly condemn.
I know about Professor Khalidi’s letter through a faculty group called Historians for Peace. The Historians have also condemned Columbia’s actions and Israel’s destruction of all colleges and universities in Gaza, an act known as “scholasticide.”
NH’s Experience with Academic Freedom
I thought I’d write a short postscript about Louis Wyman to follow the piece I wrote last week about Wyman’s prosecution of Dr. Willard Uphaus for refusing to turn over a list of guests at the World Fellowship Center in Albany, NH in the early 1950s. Uphaus served a year in jail but never gave up the list. Wyman, however, became embroiled in another US Supreme Court case as a hunter of Communists. It was called Sweezy v. Wyman and the case, as Columbia University shows us, has relevant insights for today.
Paul Sweezy was an economics professor at the University of NH where he gave a lecture about Marxism. He was called before the NH legislative committee investigating “subversive persons” and questioned about the content of his academic lecture and his beliefs about Communism. The legislative committee was comprised entirely of Wyman and his staff. Wyman had full subpoena power. If a witness refused to answer Wyman’s questions, Wyman could apply to a very malleable state court to compel answers. The findings of contempt, with their jail sentences, could be appealed to the equally malleable NH Supreme Court.
Sweezy was questioned three times, twice by Wyman and once by a judge. He generally answered the questions put to him but refused to answer questions about his personal beliefs and those about his academic teachings. Professor Sweezy was held in contempt and sentenced to jail. Sweezy appealed the contempt finding to the NH Supreme Court and, when the contempt was affirmed, appealed to the US Supreme Court. Jack Sheehan of Sheehan, Phinney and Bass (before Green) was his lawyer. Joe Millimet filed as amicus in his defense.
The US Supreme Court that heard Sweezy’s appeal was filled with legal luminaries. Earl Warren was the chief justice. Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter, William O. Douglas, John M. Harlan II, and William Brennan Jr. were associate justices. These were the justices I read about and admired when I was in law school and still admire today. Four members of the court voted to reverse Professor Sweezy’s conviction for contempt on due process grounds reasoning that the legislature conceded too much power to Wyman. Two other justices, Frankfurter and Harlan, supported the reversal on slightly different grounds related to academic freedom. It is their concurrence for which the case is remembered today.
Frankfurter, joined by Harlan, wrote a sentence that should be our guiding light. I commend it to our elected officials and those who care about our freedoms:
“A university ceases to be true to its own nature if it becomes the tool of Church or State or any sectional interest.”
The two justices further explained that “’In a university, knowledge is its own end, not merely a means to an end. . . A university is characterized by the spirit of free inquiry, its ideal being the ideal of Socrates—’to follow the argument where it leads.’ This implies the right to examine, question, modify or reject traditional ideas and beliefs. Dogma and hypothesis are incompatible, and the concept of an immutable doctrine is repugnant to the spirit of a university. The concern of its scholars is not merely to add and revise facts in relation to an accepted framework, but to be ever examining and modifying the framework itself.”
While the plurality in Sweezy admitted academic freedom could face limits, they restricted that limit to the overthrow of our government through violence.
What must the luminaries of the US Supreme Court have thought of Attorney General Wyman and the NH judges who upheld Wyman’s condemnable conduct? They hinted at this when they wrote: “And striking the balance [between protecting academic freedom and protecting government from violence] implies the exercise of judgment.” My guess is the US Supreme Court was unimpressed by NH’s judgment.
How I knew Louis Wyman
As a postscript, I will note that I came to know Louis Wyman in a very different context in the early 1980s. At that time, Wyman was a trial court judge and I was a public defender.
Wyman was easily the softest touch on the bench in Hillsborough County, NH where I practiced. He was the judge you’d maneuver to be in front of when you had a difficult plea bargain to propose or your client just deserved a break. At the same time, Judge Fred Goode, a permanently constipated ogre of a man, was to be avoided.
After leaving the Public Defenders, I joined a small private law firm, Shapira and Green, and resumed working on death penalty cases as a volunteer lawyer. One of those cases was accepted by the US Supreme Court and I needed to find a member of the Bar of the US Supreme Court to sign my petition for admission; essentially to vouch for me. I was approaching a deadline and went to the courthouse to find a champion willing to sign my application to the bar of the Supreme Court. Louis Wyman was there that day and signed my application for admission. I briefed and argued Gray v. Mississippi winning the reversal of a sentence of death in 1986.
The Closest Race in US Senate History
Louis C. Wyman had a very interesting career between the time he acted as NH’s persecutor-in-chief and when he moved my admission to the Supreme Court.
Wyman, a Harvard Law graduate from Manchester, NH, was elected to Congress after leaving the attorney general’s office. He served four terms before resigning his seat to run against John Durkin for the US Senate. The race was the closest in Senate history.
Wyman was declared the winner on election night by 355 votes. Durkin demanded a recount that found him to be the winner by ten votes. Wyman responded and another recount found him to have won by two votes. Durkin appealed to the full Senate to seat him. The Senate referred the contested election to its rules committed which deadlocked. Eventually, after seven months of delay, Wyman proposed a runoff election that Durkin won by 28,000 votes.
The 25th Amendment
One proposal that Wyman cosponsored while in Congress is particularly noteworthy today. Wyman agreed to support the 25th Amendment, which was championed by the American Bar Association (ABA). In part, the 25th Amendment provides for succession if the president dies or becomes disabled. Section 4 of the 25th Amendment provides for the removal of a president when he is unable to discharge the duties of his office, as in when the president becomes mentally incompetent. Apparently, Trump’s cabinet was considering his inability to discharge his duties during his first term in office. If only we had a cabinet willing to do today.