Alan G. Gass ’53 says he noticed tensions mounting during his last two years at Harvard.

“At the beginning, everyone thought McCarthy was a joke,” he says. “It turned out he was as evil as he could have been.”

The Crimson published special reports on academic freedom and wrote editorials in support of Furry’s refusal to testify.

“The Crimson was at the forefront of the fight against McCarthyism,” says then-Crimson President Philip M. Cronin ’53.

But several students say they and their classmates were too caught up in college life to focus on national events.

“I think everybody intellectually was very upset with McCarthy,” says Guido R. Perera Jr. ’53. “[But] there was very little direct impact on us....McCarthy could have been doing any number of things on a day-to-day basis. It didn’t mean anything at Harvard.”

Robert L. Consolini ’53-’56 says he was too busy learning new things and exploring Harvard’s cultural resources to worry about McCarthy.

“Harvard was just one cornucopia of opportunity and excitement,” he says. “And being involved in national politics? It was just not germane to the options that were just in front of us all the time.”

Even though several political organizations existed on campus at the time, including the Young Republican Club and the Young Democratic Club, members of the class say they don’t recall any major demonstrations like those that occurred on college campuses during the Vietnam War era.

The Liberal Union, a student chapter of Americans for Democratic Action, had almost 300 members, but the Young Progressives had difficulty simply recruiting the 25 members they needed to be an official student group.

“You have political activists in every class,” says Greeley. “The question is how many other people get swept along with them. In our class not too many people got swept along with it.”

‘Pusey vs. McCarthy’

The aggressive probe of Furry was just the beginning of a long battle between Harvard and the fervent anti-communists in Washington.

For a year after members of the Class of 1953 left Harvard with their degrees, McCarthy continued to search for the elusive Reds within the Yard walls.

His focus on Harvard only intensified in June when Pusey, the young president of Lawrence College, replaced Conant as University president.