More than 100 of the organization's 125 membershad not been present the previous year when theexecutive board had been elected. A small cliqueled by Charles G. Sellers '45, Abraham P. Goldblum'46 and Maurice C. Benewitz '47 gathered the nightof Oct. 2 to plan an anti-Communist coup.
At an all-group meeting the next day, theyportrayed the AYD-heir to the Young CommunistsLeague-as an undemocratic organization and wonsupport for the election of a new board. WilliamH. Bozman '46 replaced AYD member Harry A.Mendelsohn '48 as HLU president; three otherofficers were also deposed.
In a small way, the AYD-HLU subterfuge was aprecursor to the anti-Communist purges thatoccurred across the nation in later years.
While students battled the Communist label, theadministration faced similar pressure from thegovernment and the public. After the early'50s-the years of the McCarthy hearings-theUniversity was to secretly but systematically rootout junior Faculty members with Communist Partyties, as historians and journalists laterdiscovered.
Far from immune to McCarthyist Red-baiting,Harvard urged both avowed and suspected CommunistParty affiliates to report on their colleagues.Those who failed to "name names" suffered careersetbacks and were threatened with tenure denial orgrant revocation.
Politically Charged
While the campus was not extremely fragmentedin the late '40s, certain issues could arouse thepassions of the student body.
James S. Bernstein '49 remembers that the 1948presidential elections served to showcase theleftist impulses on campus.
During the warm-up to the Democratic primary,which featured Harry S Truman and Henry A.Wallace, Bernstein says he attended a rally heldby the Harvard AYD chapter.
Truman, the incumbent and an establishmentDemocrat, was clearly the moderates' choice.Wallace's conciliatory remarks about the SovietUnion, by then America's sworn enemy, had markedhim as a radical.
"I suspected [the AYD] would be for Wallace,who was the most to the left, but apparently hewasn't to the left enough for them," Bernsteinsays.
Bernstein recalls how, at a cocktail party forpotential new members, the AYD student leaderschanted, "If Truman's in the way, we're gonna rollright over him."
"Then they sang the same thing for Wallace,"Bernstein adds.
Former Crimson editor David E. Lilienthal Jr.'49 remembers considerable debate in The Crimson'seditorial meeting when the paper was decidingwhether to endorse Truman or Wallace. Ultimately,The Crimson supported Truman.
Lilienthal says that the debate over academicfreedom aroused student passions as well,especially after The Crimson ran a series ofarticles chronicling the faculty dismissals atschools around the country.
"This was a major theme in the country at thetime," Lilienthal says. "If people didn't stand upand fight in this time of hysteria, Harvard wouldeventually find itself threatened."
Bellah, however, paints a different picture ofthe Harvard reaction. He says that while studentswere aware and concerned about what was going onoutside of Harvard, few were courageous enough toopenly challenge freedom of speech violations.
"You could have intense discussions at thedinner table, but that didn't result in any kindof activity that would have a real effect onevents," Bellah says. "No one got agitated aboutit, because if you started talking about the Billof Rights, you were branded a Communist."