ABSTRACT
The phenomenon of McCarthyism is much broader than the meteoric career of Senator Joseph McCarthy, from his first publicized charges, in 1950, of Communists in the State Department to his downfall, in 1954, with the Army-McCarthy hearings—which the new medium of television allowed many of people to watch with fascination. Nevitt Sanford gave a sophisticated participant-observer account of the University of California oath controversy. Psychologists and the Society for the Psychological Study of Social Issues were involved with McCarthyism by being victimized, and by resisting victimization or accommodating to it. In the new cold war climate, the House Un-American Activities Committee, which as the "Dies committee" had had a long history of harassing New Deal liberals and leftists, rolled into high gear. In 1949, the regents of the University of California voted to impose a special anti-Communist oath on all faculties, initiating the loyalty oath controversy that lasted into 1952.
