Thank you for your inquiry about my seminar on "Communism and American Life," sponsored by the National Endowment for the Humanities. The seminar will be offered June 26 through July 28, 2000 on the campus of Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. I hope it will include teachers with a wide range of interests and backgrounds, from the sciences and the humanities, as well as history and the social sciences.

Communism may be dead- except for a handful of countries- but no one interested in 20th century history can ignore its influence and importance. Even in the United States, where communism never became a mass movement, it still had a profound impact on national life and culture. In the 1920s and 1930s a small but significant number of Americans were attracted to its doctrines. But its afterlife has been even more significant.

Within the past year the decision of the Motion Picture Academy to honor Elia Kazan provoked an uproar because he had been an informer before the House Committee on Un-American Activities, new books on Soviet espionage ignited debates in the New York Times about whether Joe McCarthy had been right and exposed the activities of an 87 year-old British great-grandmother who was proudly unrepentant about turning over atomic secrets to the USSR in the 1940s, and new novels by Phillip Roth and William Buckley revisited the issue of American communism.

Why has the debate about American Communism been so intense and lengthy? Why does it still resonate in American life? What kinds of dilemmas did and does the communist issue pose for democratic societies? What does recent scholarship suggest about such major symbolic issues as the Hiss and Rosenberg cases? These are the kinds of questions that I am interested in exploring in this seminar on Communism and American Life.

In an attempt to answer such questions, I have focused my own scholarship on American radicalism and communism, writing several books on the American Communist Party and espionage, including The Heyday of American Communism (Basic Books, 1984), The Secret World of American Communism (Yale, 1995), The Amerasia Spy Case: Prelude to McCarthyism (North Carolina, 1996), The Soviet World of American Communism (Yale, 1998) and, most recently, Venona: Decoding Soviet Espionage in America (Yale, 1999). Much of my recent scholarship has been based on recently released documents from Russian archives and decrypted World War II cables just released by American intelligence agencies. The opportunity to explore these fascinating issues at this time with thoughtful colleagues in a relaxed seminar is exciting and exhilirating. We will have an opportunity to come away with an appreciation for one of the great controversies of twentieth-century history and for the dilemmas that the communist issue posed for democratic societies.

Although not all of the texts for the seminar were written in the 1930s, the political experiences of that decade- the depression, the rise of fascism and the purges in the Soviet Union- structured the response of many Americans to communism for the next generation. The horrible economic depression that afflicted Western capitalist societies and the rise of fascism propelled many people to the political left. The brutal purges in the Soviet Union starkly raised the relationship between means and ends and the value of individual rights. And, the so-called "red decade" sparked a virulent anti-communism that flourished in the post World War II era.

The seminar will begin with some brief historical readings to give participants a basic background in American communism and familiarity with some of the controversies over its historiography. We will also view the movie, "Reds", based on the life of John Reed, one of the founders of American Communism and a documentary, "Seeing Red", on the history of the CPUSA. Members of the seminar will do a dramatic reading of Clifford Odets' short agitprop drama, Waiting For Lefty, and listen to a variety of folk songs, written and sung by such Party members as Woody Guthrie and Pete Seeger, that emerged from the Communist movement and that convey a sense of the appeal of communism.

The first book we will read is John Steinbeck's In Dubious Battle, an account of the efforts of a group of Communists to organize a strike among migratory workers in California in the 1930s. Next, we will read Richard Wright's autobiographical American Hunger. Author of Native Son, one of the great American novels, Wright was a Party member in the 1930s and remained a fellow traveler into the 1940s. The third major book for the seminar is Whittaker Chambers' powerful Witness, perhaps the classic work of anti-communist autobiography by the man who accused Alger Hiss of being a Soviet spy and helped launch Richard Nixon's national political career. We will follow that with Lillian Hellman's best-selling autobiography, Scoundrel Time, a defense of "progressives" and a fierce denunciation of anti-communism by one of America's best-known playwrights. We will also discuss the relationship between Jews and American communism, using the controversy over the Rosenberg spy case as a springboard. Throughout the seminar we will be reading chapters from Murray Kempton's classic set of essays: Part Of Our Time: Some Monuments and Ruins of the Thirties.

The final section of the seminar will emphasize the theme of informing. We will read Arthur Miller's The Crucible, widely acknowledged as a classic of American theater, written after he had refused to "name names" before a congressional committee. Along with The Crucible (we will also watch the film), we will see and discuss "On the Waterfront", an Academy-award winning drama about informing starring Marlon Brando, that was written by Budd Schulberg and directed by Elia Kazan. Both Kazan and Schulberg had "named names" before the House Un-American Activities Committee.

There will be a film series to enable everyone to see some old classics about communism (My Son John, The Front, Invasion of the Body Snatchers, I Was A Communist for the FBI) and several recent documentaries about Soviet espionage. I have taught this NEH seminar or a variant of it four times before and each time it has been a terrific experience both for the participants and myself. In nearly thirty years of teaching, no other course has proven as stimulating or provocative.

The seminar will meet four mornings a week and will last about three hours, with a break in the middle. Several afternoons or evenings we will have screenings to see movies. In addition to the readings we will all do, each participant will select a topic relating to American communism in individual discussions with me during the first two weeks. While participants will not be expected to write research papers, they will present a twenty minute discussion of their topic to the seminar during an appropriate week. I can envisage participants reading about prominent intellectuals who flirted with communism like Theodore Dreiser, Aaron Copland, Ernest Hemingway or John Dos Passos or exploring recent charges about espionage involving I.F. Stone or Robert Oppenheimer, or reading novels dealing with communist themes.

Emory University is an ideal setting for the seminar. The campus is located in a pleasant suburban neighborhood only five miles from downtown, with convenient and inexpensive bus and subway service enabling participants to make use of the High Museum of Art, the Martin Luther King Jr. Center for the Study of Nonviolent Social Change and the Carter Presidential Library and Center. Atlanta is a bustling city with an array of cultural, recreational and gastronomic resources, and, for most of this decade, a championship baseball team. Only an hour or two away are the Blue Ridge Mountains and superb camping, hiking and outdoor swimming opportunities. Beaches of the Atlantic Ocean and the Gulf Coast are a five hour ride. There is an active summer school session at Emory so participants will be able to enjoy the concerts, films and talks that are a regular part of campus life. Participants in the seminar will, as visiting scholars, have full access to the University’s excellent libraries and a fine art and archaeology museum. A beautiful gymnasium offers basketball, handball and squash courts, an Olympic-size swimming pool, tennis courts, weight room, Nautilus machines and indoor and outdoor tracks.

Members of the seminar will be housed in a newly renovated, air-conditioned residence hall, which offers single rooms with a private bathroom for approximately $840, including tax, for the five-week session. Doubles are approximately $645 per person. Apartments for families are available at a cost of approximately $1200. All of these prices include linen. There is a lounge in the residence hall and each of the rooms has a small kitchen. A variety of student cafeterias are within walking distance. Those participants with children will find a number of day camps (sports fitness, tennis, baseball, basketball and computer) offered on campus at reasonable prices.

Participants in the summer seminar will receive $3250 to cover their costs. The first check, for one-half the amount, will be available when the participants arrive; the second will be disbursed mid-way through the seminar.

Official application forms and guidelines are included with this letter. Your completed application should be postmarked no later than March 1, 2000, and should be addressed to me as follows:

Dr. Harvey Klehr

Department of Political Science

Emory University

Atlanta, Georgia 30322

Perhaps the most important part of the seminar application is the application essay that must be submitted as part of the complete application. This essay should include any personal and academic information that is relevant; reasons for applying to the seminar; your interest, both academic and personal, in the subject of the seminar; qualifications to do the work of the seminar and make a contribution to it; what you hope to accomplish in the seminar; and the relation of the seminar to your teaching.

If you would like any additional information about the seminar, please write me at the above address or call me at (404) 727-6575. I look forward to receiving your application.