Civil Liberties Summary

In this Vanguard episode, the students chronicle their experiences with the college newspaper, the Vanguard, during a period in which civil liberties were threatened on college campuses around the country. These student journalists, some of whom were WWII veterans, were involved with the Vanguard when President Harry Gideonse of Brooklyn College shut it down and suspended several of its writers and editors. The closure was the culmination of an ongoing struggle over the newspaper's content. The Vanguard journalists, an eclectic group of civil libertarians with a range of political orientations, asserted that the president closed the paper in order to squelch student opinions that did not conform to those of the administration. Gideonse, they charged, had brought the Cold War to the college.

Interview Theme Index

Documents

"Brooklyn College Suspends 6 Youths,"
New York Times,
May 21, 1950.
"Brooklyn College Suspends Six Vanguard Editors,"
Brooklyn Eagle,
May 21, 1950.
"Tantrums on the Campus,
New York Post,
May 24, 1950.
"Vanguard Censored,"
The Young Progressive,
1950.
"The Back of His Hand,"
Student Flyer, 1950.
"Conduct Unbecoming an Administrator,"
Student Flyer, 1950.
"This is Academic Freedom in Brooklyn College,"
Student Flyer, 1950.
"Mama, What's a Draugnav?,"
Student Flyer, 1950.
"President Gideonse is Afraid of the Student Body!,"
Student Flyer, 1950.

Sample Interview Transcript

Bill Taylor

Vanguard Narrators and Biographies