Word: ultimatum
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...first date the Regents established an oath of non-adherence to any "subversive" organizations: the oath was later revised under pressure of faculty protests. Then in February, 1950, the Regents voted that employees on the eight California campuses must either "sign or resign" by April 30. This ultimatum unified faculty indignation against the oath order so solidly that the Regents were forced to compromise their position on April 21 by agreeing to an Alumni committee proposal acceptable to most of the faculty. Under this proposal the oath is not separately administered but is an affirmation included in each new contract...
This decision came to be known as the "sign--or else" ultimatum, and served to unite the faculty still more strongly against the Regents; even some of those faculty members who had already signed the oath began to take an active part in the opposition...
...division between faculty and Regents seemed to have been made almost irreconcilable by the ultimatum. Joel H. Hildebrand, dean of the College of Chemistry and a member of the four man committee of the Academic Senate which had been advising the Regents on the oath, said, "No conceivable damage to the university at the hands of the hypothetical Communists among us could have equaled the damage resulting from the unrest, ill-will and suspicion engendered by this series of events." He later remarked, "If there are Communists among us they are lying so low they at least do not constitute...
Regent John Francis Neylan, San Francisco attorney who voted for the oath and ultimatum, stated that the whole issue could be reduced to the question "shall the Regents accord to each card-carrying Communist the confidence, the respect, and the privileges accorded to the distinguished scholars who have made the university a great seat of learning?" but an authorized spokesman for the Academic Senate made it clear that the faculty did not want Communists on the faculty. "We have patiently tried to settle this bugaboo of repudiation, but Regent Neylan has been unwilling to listen," Professor Malcolm Davisson stated...
...faculty on the same poll and by an almost similar vote had rejected the Regents special non-Communist oath. Opposition continued to grow against the Regents "sign--or else" ultimatum. Even the student body assembled in the Greek amphitheater on the Berkeley campus for a mass protest meeting...