Red Alert: UW Examines Its Past through the `All Powers Project'

It was Drama School Senior Lecturer Mark Jenkins' chance discovery of the transcripts of the Canwell hearings that started the UW's All Powers Project. Jenkins decided to turn the material into a play, All Powers Necessary and Convenient. Drama School Director Sarah Nash Gates saw a workshop production and told Jenkins, "We have to do this at the University." The play will run Feb. 4-15. Gates also alerted other UW departments to the coming of the 50th anniversary, suggesting an interdisciplinary program. Here is a schedule of planned events:

Thrusday, Jan. 22: Robert M. O'Neil, founding director of the Thomas Jefferson Center for the Protection of Free Speech and former president of the Universities of Wisconsin and Virginia, spoke on the state of academic freedom in a lecture sponsored by the law school. Here is an account of O'Neil's address published in the Daily

Friday, Jan. 23: A panel on academic freedom and tenure was held in Kane Hall. Here is an account of the panel published in the Daily.
* Historian Richard Fried of the University of Illinois at Chicago spokeon "The Context of the Second Red Scare" at 7:30 p.m. in the lobby of Allen Library. Fried is the author of Nightmare in Red and Men Against McCarthy.

Saturday, Jan. 24: The Department of History and the Center for the Study of the Pacific Northwest offered a series of events.
* Ellen Schrecker, Yeshiva University, spoke on "McCarthyism Goes to College: Anti-Communism and American Higher Education" at 9 a.m. in 301 Gowen. Schrecker is the author of No Ivory Tower: McCarthyism and the Universities.
* "Anti-Communism and the University of Washington, 1948-1960: Recollections from Those Who Were There," was a panel discussion held at 10:30 a.m. in 301 Gowen. The moderator was Jane Sanders, author of Cold War on the Campus. Participants included Edwin Guthman, former Seattle Times reporter who won a Pulitzer Prize for his reporting on the Melvin Rader case; Ernest Henley, retired physics professor and former dean of arts and sciences; Barbara Krohn, a UW student at the time of the hearings and former UW Daily adviser; Howard Nostrand, retired professor and chair of Romance languages and literature; and two members of a 1948 anti-Canwell group, the Committee for Academic Freedom, local businessman Stimson Bullitt and civil rights attorney Kenneth MacDonald.
* "Anti-Communism in the Pacific Northwest: Two Perspectives" was presented at 1:45 p.m. in 301 Gowen. Lorraine McConaghy, Museum of History and Industry, spoke on "Anti-Communism in Washington State, 1947-1965: Albert Canwell to P.C. Beezley." Floyd McKay, Western Washington University, spoke "The Failure of News Objectivity in the McCarthy Era: The Press in Oregon, Washington, and California."

Feb. 4-15: All Powers Necessary and Convenient., an original play by Drama School Senior Lecturer Mark Jenkins, will recreate the hearings in the Playhouse Theatre. For tickets, call (206) 543-4880.

Ongoing: An exhibit of materials related to the Canwell hearings will be on display in the Allen Library balcony throughout Winter Quarter. A web site for the All Powers Project has many relevant links to McCarthy era sites.
* In January, the UW Press reissued Melvin Rader's book False Witness, a memoir of his efforts to clear his name after being falsely accused in the Canwell hearings. The book has a new afterword by Seattle attorney and activist Leonard Schroeter.

Reader Reaction to "Seeing Red": Was It "Superb" Reporting or "Trash"?, an unprecedented outpouring of reader reaction to the article.

Online Primary Sources of the Canwell Committee Hearings

Return to the Beginning of "Seeing Red"

Send a letter to the editor at columns@u.washington.edu.

Table of Contents