Thomas McGrath

’s Statement To HUAC Essay, Research Paper


After a dead serious consideration of the effects of this


committee’s work and of my relation to it, I find that for the following reasons I must


refuse to cooperate with this body.


In the first place, as a teacher, my first responsibility is to my students. To


cooperate with this committee would be to set for them an example of accommodation to


forces which can only have, as their end effect, the destruction of education itself. Such


accommodation on my part would ruin my value as a teacher, and I am proud to say that a


great majority of my students–and I believe this is true of students generally–do not


want me to accommodate myself to this committee. In a certain sense, I have no choice in


the matter–the students would not want me back in the classroom if I were to take any


course of action other than the one I am pursuing.


Secondly, as a teacher, I have a responsibility to the profession itself. We teachers


have no professional oath of the sort that doctors take, but there is a kind of unwritten


oath which we follow to teach as honestly, fairly and fully as we can. The effect of the


committee is destructive of such an ideal, destructive of academic freedom. As Mr. Justice


Douglas has said: "This system of spying and surveillance with its accompanying


reports and trials cannot go hand in hand with academic freedom. It produces standardized


thought, not the pursuit of truth." A teacher who will tack and turn with every shift


of the political wind cannot be a good teacher. I have never done this myself, nor will I


ever. In regard to my teaching I have tried to hold to two guidelines, the first from


Chaucer that "gladly will I learn and gladly teach"; the second a paraphrase of


the motto of the late General Stilwell: "Illiterati on carborundum."


Thirdly, as a poet I must refuse to cooperate with the committee on what I can only


call esthetic grounds. The view of life which we receive through the great works of art is


a privileged one–it is a view of life according to probability or necessity, not subject


to the chance and accident of our real world and therefore in a sense truer than the life

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we see lived all around us. I believe that one of the things required of us is to try to


give life an esthetic ground, to give it some of the pattern and beauty of art. I have


tried as best I can to do this with my own life, and while I do not claim any very great


success, it would be anti-climactic, destructive of the pattern of my life, if I were to


cooperate with the committee. Then too, poets have been notorious non-cooperators where


committees of this sort are concerned. As a traditionalist, I would prefer to take my


stand with Marvell, Blake, Shelley and Garcia Lorca rather than with innovators like Mr.


Jackson. I do not wish to bring dishonor upon my tribe.


These, then are reasons for refusing to cooperate, but I am aware that none of them is


acceptable to the committee. When I was notified to appear here, my first instinct was


simply to refuse to answer committee questions out of personal principle and on the


grounds of the rights of man and let it go at that. On further consideration, however, I


have come to feel that such a stand would be mere self-indulgence and that it would weaken


the fight which other witnesses have made to protect the rights guaranteed under our


Constitution. Therefore I further refuse to answer the committee on the grounds of the


fourth amendment. I regard this committee as usurpers of illegal powers and my enforced


appearance here as in the nature of unreasonable search and seizure.


I further refuse on the grounds of the first amendment, which in guaranteeing free


speech also guarantees my right to be silent. Although the first amendment expressly


forbids any abridgement of this and other freedoms, the committee is illegally engaged in


the establishment of a religion of fear. I cannot cooperate with it in this


unconstitutional activity. Lastly, it is my duty to refuse to answer this committee,


claiming my rights under the fifth amendment as a whole and in all its parts, and


understanding that the fifth amendment was inserted in the Constitution to bulwark the


first amendment against the activities of committees such as this one, that no one may be


forced to bear witness against himself.


From North Dakota Quarterly (Fall 1982).

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