ABSTRACT
Because Russell was convinced that the relentless drive to reaction in America was militating against a peaceful solution of the world’s problems he became increasingly sensitive to and critical of illiberal tendencies in that country. He devoted much time to studying the state of civil liberties in America. The current spate of Atom-spy cases on both sides of the Atlantic, particularly the case of Fuchs, whose confessions led to the trials of the Rosenbergs and Sobell, had served to intensify the McCarthyist campaigns in America. Although Russell at this stage did not challenge the validity of the trials or their judgments, he did perceive a direct connection between the trials and McCarthy’s investigations. It was evident to Russell that the witch-hunting apparatus was beginning to permeate every facet of American social life. The American Committee for Cultural Freedom, which was an affiliate of the Congress for Cultural Freedom, an organization which he had agreed to sponsor in 1951, did not seem to be immune from these destructive processes. On 24 April 1953 Katherine Faulkner, a voluntary worker for the Emergency Civil Liberties Committee, an organization devoted to upholding the U.S. Constitution, wrote:
In spite of many obstacles, such as lack of funds and being smeared as a Communist-front, we held a very interesting conference in January here in New York on the Bill of Rights which included forums on Academic Freedom, the Political Use of Fear, Freedom of the Arts and Loyalty and the Fifth Amendment. Dr. Alexander Meiklejohn, Senator William Langer of North Dakota and Professor Hugh H. Wilson of Princeton University were among the chief speakers.
An organization calling itself the American Committee for Cultural Freedom was the instigator of the attacks against us and tried by the best McCarthy tactics of smear and guilt-by-association to destroy us. Professor George Counts, chairman of the Committee, should know better but I understand that he was rabidly pro-Communist in the 1930s and is trying now to repudiate his past by projecting his guilt feelings onto a destructive level. I believe everyone has a right to change his mind and to think what he pleases, but certainly that does not entitle him to tell others what to think or to decide upon the degree of their anti-communism before they are acceptable. Many of us have been shocked to see your name listed as one of the Sponsors of this American Committee for Cultural Freedom. We have always looked to you as a free thinker in the finest tradition and cannot believe that you would knowingly support an organization which, accepting heresay as a basis for judgement, is helping to bring to pass in this country the very totalitarianism it fears.
