Frederic Ewen

Frederic Ewen (1899 – October 18, 1988) was an English professor at Brooklyn College from 1930 to 1952. During the height of the McCarthy period Ewen was forced to resign his teaching position after refusing to cooperate with a Senate Internal Security Committee investigation of communism and higher education.

Frederic Ewen, who was born in Lemberg, Austria in 1899, one of eleven children. He immigrated to the United States with his family in 1912. He graduated from the City College of New York and received his Ph.D. in English and Comparative Literature from Columbia University. His first book, The Prestige of Schiller in England, based on his doctoral dissertation, was published by Columbia University Press.

Ewen was appointed assistant professor of English at Brooklyn College in 1930. he joined the Teachers Union shortly thereafter and was involved in left politics on campus and within the larger movement in New York City.

In 1940 the New York State Legislature's Joint Committee to Investigate Procedures and Methods of Allocating State Moneys for Public Purposes and Subversive Activities, known as the Rapp-Coudert Committee, launched an investigation of public schools and city colleges. Along with 6 other professors, Ewen was summoned before the committee and refused to testify. He described the committee's work as "an attack on the things that the [educational] system stands for and has fought in the last 20 years to obtain." The Committee sought to jail some of them, including Ewen, for contempt. In his defense he submitted an affidavit stating "I am not a Communist or a member of the Communist party and I have never engaged in any 'subversive' activities at Brooklyn College or elsewhere." Ewen and his Brooklyn College colleagues were tenured, so they retained their position, while City College professors including Morris Schappes and Moses Finley lost their jobs when their contracts were not renewed.

In 1942, the English department recommended Ewen for promotion to associate professor. College president Harry Gideonse declined to approve it. In 1952, Ewen and three of the other Brooklyn College professors who had been called to testify by the Rapp-Coudert Committee were summoned before the U.S. Senate Internal Security Committee chaired by Pat McCarran. They again refused to testify. Having served 30 years, Ewen was eligible for retirement and announced his decision to retire when he took the witness chair". He later told reporters he did so "for reasons of intellectual honesty". The other three professors lost their jobs.

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