From McCarthyism to Citizens United.
From McCarthyism to “Citizens United”
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, Douglas Bell discusses Chandler Davis and the contest over free speech.
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From McCarthyism to Citizens United | The Time of Monsters
The mathematician Chandler Davis, who died in 2002 at age 96, was one of the notable victims of the second Red Scare. In 1960, Davis was sentenced to six months in prison for refusing to answer questions about his membership in the Communist Party. Davis’s lawyers defended him with the innovative legal argument that the First Amendment barred such questioning. While Davis lost in the courts, his legal battles were still an important effort in a larger battle to extend the parameters on political speech. Davis’s story is told in a new book, The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis by Steve Batterson. Siobhan Robert’s obituary for Davis ran in The Nation.
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, I talked to journalist Doug Bell, who knew Chandler Davis, about this book and Davis’s larger place in history. We take up the history of anti-communism and how it has limited free speech, the legal philosophy of Alexander Meiklejohn, and the reactionary Supreme Court's use of the First Amendment to expand corporate power.
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Chandler Davis photographed in 1975.
(Wikimedia Commons)The mathematician Chandler Davis, who died in 2022 at age 96, was one of the notable victims of the second Red Scare. In 1960, Davis was sentenced to six months in prison for refusing to answer questions about his membership in the Communist Party. Davis’s lawyers defended him with the innovative legal argument that the First Amendment barred such questioning. While Davis lost in the courts, his legal battles were still an important effort in a larger battle to extend the parameters on political speech. Davis’s story is told in a new book, The Prosecution of Professor Chandler Davis, by Steve Batterson. Siobhan Robert’s obituary for Davis ran in The Nation.
On this episode of The Time of Monsters, I talked to journalist Doug Bell, who knew Chandler Davis, about this book and Davis’s larger place in history. We take up the history of anti-communism and how it has limited free speech, the legal philosophy of Alexander Meiklejohn, and the reactionary Supreme Court’s use of the First Amendment to expand corporate power.
The Nation Podcasts
Here's where to find podcasts from The Nation. Political talk without the boring parts, featuring the writers, activists and artists who shape the news, from a progressive perspective.
Where Did Biden’s Foreign Policy Go Wrong? | The Time of Monsters
Writing in the Nation, David Klion recently reviewed a Alexander Ward’s new book on Biden’s foreign policy, which offers a redemption arc whereby an administration wounded by the botched exit from Afghanistan made good by its handling of the Ukraine invasion.
But as Klion notes, the two year frame of the book is too narrow. In conversation, David and I contextualize Biden’s foreign policy, which is deeply unpopular and flawed, in the larger history of hawkish liberalism. We look at the attempt to revive a style of military Keynesianism and Biden’s deep investment in Zionism, as well as the contradictions on issues of human rights that are hampering Biden’s presidency.
During the discussion, I alluded to this excellent Mother Jones article by Noah Lanard on Biden and Israel.
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