Rutgers University. Board of Governors Special Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure Records

The records of the collection are those compiled by John O. Bigelow, chairman of the Rutgers University Board of Governors' Special Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure, and contain correspondence and documents relating to the case of Abraham Glasser, Associate Professor of Law at Rutgers, who resigned in 1953, and to the cases of Moses I. Finely, Assistant Professor of History and Simon W. Heimlich, Associate Professor of Physics and Mathematics, who were dismissed from their positions in 1952 by the then governing body of the University, the Board of Trustees. All three left the University as a result of invoking the fifth amendment before Congressional Subcommittees in refusal to answer questions as to their possible Communist affiliations. Bigelow was a member of the Board of Governors, the governing body which replaced the Board of Trustees in 1956.

On October 1, 1956, a month after the new body was put into effect, the Board of Governors declared University statutes, resolutions, and other provisions relating to academic freedom in effect prior to September 1, 1956, to be inoperative. The Board of Governors subsequently appointed a Special Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure, which was given the task of developing new policies and procedures. The Board of Governors also invited the faculty to share in this task. On May 17, 1956, the University Senate had unanimously passed a motion by Dean Lehan K. Tunks of the Law School that the Executive Committee of the Senate should set up a mechanism to formulate a new statement on academic freedom and tenure.

The rewriting of University statutes was in large part a result of the impending and eventual censure of Rutgers University by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) and the Association of American Law Schools (AALS). The AAUP took issue with the policy of the December 12, 1952, resolution of the Board of Trustees, which called for the automatic dismissal of any faculty member who invoked the fifth amendment to refusal to answer questions of a duly appointed investigatory body in relation to Communist Party membership or affiliation. The Trustees had cited this behavior as harmful to intellectual and academic freedom and to the image of the University. The AALS took issue with the policy as well, and also argued that Glasser had been denied a fair hearing by Rutgers, and that academic due process in his case had been violated. Although the Board of Governors eventually amended the University statutes on academic freedom and tenure, in effect discarding the automatic dismissal policy, and recognized that the hearing of Glasser at Rutgers did not satisfy the standards of the AALS 1954 Statement on Academic Freedom and Tenure, the body denied Glasser a rehearing, as it felt that it should avoid passing judgment on its predecessor, the Board of Trustees. At the request of Rutgers University President Lewis Webster Jones, Board of Governor member Tracy S. Voorhees prepared a statement of the Board of Governors on the Glasser case outlining its progression, Glasser's new demands, and justifying the actions of the University.