page_title: Harold F. Cherniss
section_title: Cold War anxiety at Berkeley
hierarchical_section_title: Harold F. Cherniss / Life / Cold War anxiety at Berkeley
caption_attribution_description: English: In September 1945, many participants returned to the Trinity Test site for news crews. Here Oppenheimer and Groves examine the remains of one the bases of the steel test tower. Français&#160;: En Septembre 1945, certains participants sont retournés sur le site d'essai Trinity. Ici, Oppenheimer et Groves, équipés de simples chaussons de protection examinent les restes d'une des bases de la tour d'essai en acier
context_page_description: Harold Fredrik Cherniss was an American classicist and historian of ancient philosophy. While at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, he was said to be "the country's foremost expert on Plato and Aristotle."
  According to Tarán, Cherniss's "greatest contribution to scholarship is doubtless his two books on Aristotle, supplemented by The Riddle of the Early Academy ... his published works on Plato, Aristotle, and the Academy are among the very few publications that revolutionized the field... His significance was recognized all over the world not only by classicists and philosophers but by the learned societies of which he was a member and the various universities that awarded him honorary degrees."
  Cherniss's scholarship continues to shape the study of ancient Greek philosophy in several significant ways:
  Cherniss is remembered as a champion of Platonic unitarianism, the contention that Plato's dialogues present a single, consistent and unchanging philosophical system.
context_section_description: In 1946, while still in Europe, Cherniss accepted an offer to return to Berkeley as a Professor of Greek. With the Berlin blockade of 1948–1949 and the Communist victory in China and first Soviet atomic bomb in 1949, America and Berkeley were soon caught up in Cold War tensions. In the rising anxiety stoked by Senator Joseph McCarthy and the House Un-American Activities Committee, fears grew that communists were infiltrating American universities. These were acute at Berkeley where the Radiation Laboratory situated in the hills above campus had been heavily involved in developing the atomic bomb. In September 1949, McCarthy's committee commenced a hearing on alleged communist infiltration of the "Rad Lab." The University of California soon began requiring its faculty to sign an anti-communist loyalty oath. As these tensions mounted, Cherniss accepted an offer from the Institute of Advanced Study and resigned from his post at Berkeley: "his tenure there was cut short by the controversy which arose from the California Legislature's demand that state employees swear loyalty oaths."
  Back on the East Coast, Cherniss remained involved in what quickly became a national debate over Berkeley's loyalty oaths and academic Freedom. By 1950, faculty resistance at Berkeley hardened and ultimately some 31 faculty members were fired. Recent immigrants among the faculty were particularly opposed: "persecuted by the Nazis and forced to leave Germany, they were rightly suspicious of the loyalty oath as a cold war demand for conformity or worse, inimical to the freedoms necessary at any institution of higher learning." Cherniss organized a public letter from the faculty of the Institute for Advanced Study in support of academic freedom that was distributed to the faculty at Berkeley and published:
  Being aware that the regents have dismissed members of your faculty contrary to the recommendation of your committee on privilege and tenure, and that this action violates the policy of tenure and the principle of the faculty's self-determination and responsibility hitherto recognized by the University of California, we unanimously write to encourage you to unite in defense of your traditional policies and principles against encroachment.
  The letter was signed by Oppenheimer, Cherniss, Einstein, Panofsky, and others. Similar letters were sent by the faculty of Princeton University and other universities.
  The well-known German-Jewish medievalist Ernst Kantorowicz left Germany in 1939 after the Nazi government required civil servants to swear a loyalty oath to Hitler and became a professor at Berkeley. "With Germany's experience before his eyes," he refused to sign Berkeley's loyalty oath and was among those dismissed. Later, in 1951, Cherniss suggested he apply to the Institute for Advanced Study and he secured a permanent position there. Cherniss's old colleague at Johns Hopkins, the classicist Ludwig Edelstein, had also moved to Berkeley after the war but refused to sign the loyalty oath and lost his job. He later returned to a position at Johns Hopkins. In October 1952 Berkeley's loyalty oath was ruled unconstitutional by the California Supreme Court. The university was ordered to reinstate all dismissed faculty.
caption: Oppeneheimer and General Groves examine the site of the first test of an atomic bomb in New Mexico in 1945.
exif: {"Image ImageWidth": "1655", "Image ImageLength": "2000", "Image BitsPerSample": "8", "Image Compression": "Uncompressed", "Image PhotometricInterpretation": "1", "Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image SamplesPerPixel": "1", "Image XResolution": "200", "Image YResolution": "200", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop CS5 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2011:06:24 00:04:15", "Image ExifOffset": "236", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "374", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7139", "EXIF ColorSpace": "Uncalibrated", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "1544", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "2000"}