Loyalty Oath Roils Academic Waters

At the height of the anti-communist scare, more than half of UCLA’s faculty protested the signing of a so-called loyalty oath that the University of California Board of Regents was requiring of all employees, regardless of tenure. Most faculty members later gave in to the pressure, swearing that they were not members of the Communist Party or any group that advocated overthrowing the government by force or violence. Thirty-one professors refused. The California Supreme Court struck down UC’s loyalty oath in 1952, ruling that the regents had no authority to impose an oath on state employees, who were covered by the Levering Act, which required an oath by state, county and local government employees. The court ordered the reinstatement of faculty members who had been dismissed for failing to sign the oath if they signed the Levering oath.