History Colloquium

Event

When: Oct 30, 2020 - 02:00pm - Oct 30, 2020 - 04:00pm

Where: Zoom

 

“Gargoyles, Guardians, and Guttersnipes: The Construction of an Anti-Fascist Public Sphere at The City College of New York, 1934-1939”

Carter Barnwell

This paper examines a series of incidents at the City College of New York (CCNY) in the mid-1930s in which anti-fascist students bridged morality and politics in shaping public opinion about the appropriate role of the University in the face of fascist threat.  Western democratic governments were thrown into crisis in February 1933 when pacifist students at Oxford University, England vowed they would not fight “for King and Country” a mere ten days after Adolf Hitler was named Chancellor of Germany.  This put national governments on notice and made college campuses around the globe sites of conflict in debates pitting loyalty to country against responsibility to philosophical conviction.  In the United States, a House Committee was empowered to investigate “dangerous” foreign propaganda on American soil while soliciting national loyalty and a civic “Americanism.”  Meanwhile, activist students agitated for greater academic freedom and less government encroachment on campus, while promoting loyalty at the local level.  Anti-fascist discourse offered both sides a way out of this confrontation.  The success of student activism allowed students from across the political spectrum to galvanize around anti-fascism, helping produce CCNY’s outsized representation in the volunteer force supporting the Second Republic during The Spanish Civil War of 1936-1939.  In analyzing student anti-fascism in local publications and public demonstrations, the essay chronicles the remarkable spontaneity shown by the students in breathing life into an as-yet undefined discourse.  The paper concludes that American anti-fascism benefited both government and civil society in the 1930s, before being weaponized to serve Cold War narratives in the years to follow.

 

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Meeting ID: 998 5665 3502