Three Papers on Political Conformity and Civil Liberties [1951–52]

The unnamed public official who had signed this document, Wilbur Young, was not an educational bureaucrat, but rather the Republican holder of an elected office in the state government of Indiana, which perhaps explains his brazen call “to indoctrinate American youth for American democracy”. Young was a former classroom teacher and local school administrator who successfully challenged the Democratic Superintendent of Public Instruction in a heated campaign that coincided with congressional elections of November 1950 in which Republicans made gains nationwide. Winning a second term four years later, Young held the post for eight years in all. His authorship of the document pilloried by Russell was disclosed in an unidentified news clipping datelined Indianapolis, 26 November 1951. Like other staunch anti-communists, William Henry Chamberlin had a fellow-travelling past and had published a generally sympathetic appraisal of the Soviet experiment while working as Moscow correspondent for the Christian Science Monitor.