Engineering Education "Today in History" Blog: General Electric fires all Communist employees
by Alice Agogino
closeAuthor: Alice Agogino
Name: Alice Agogino
Email: agogino@berkeley.edu
Site: http://www.me.berkeley.edu/faculty/agogino/
About: Alice M. Agogino is the Roscoe and Elizabeth Hughes Professor of Mechanical Engineering and is affiliated faculty at the Haas School of Business in their Operations and Information Technology Management Group. Her research interests include: community-based design; sustainable engineering; intelligent learning systems; information retrieval and data mining; multiobjective and strategic product design; nonlinear optimization; probabilistic modeling; intelligent control and manufacturing; sensor validation, fusion and diagnostics; wireless sensor networks; multimedia and computer-aided design; design databases; design theory and methods; MEMS/NEMS synthesis and computer-aided design; artificial intelligence and decision and expert systems; and gender/ethnic equity.
She has served in a number of administrative positions at UC Berkeley, including Chair of the Faculty Senate, Associate Dean of Engineering and Faculty Assistant to the Executive Vice Chancellor and Provost in Educational Development and Technology. Prof. Agogino also served as Director for Synthesis, an NSF-sponsored coalition of eight universities with the goal of reforming undergraduate engineering education, and continues as PI for the NEEDS (www.needs.org) and SMETE.ORG digital libraries of courseware in science, mathematics, engineering and technology.
Prof. Agogino received a B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Mexico (1975), M.S. degree in Mechanical Engineering (1978) from the University of California at Berkeley and Ph.D. from the Department of Engineering-Economic Systems at Stanford University (1984). Prior to joining the faculty at UC Berkeley, she worked in industry for Dow Chemical, General Electric and SRI International. She has authored over 150 scholarly publications; has won numerous teaching, best paper and research awards; and is a member of the National Academy of Engineering (NAE). At NAE she served on the Committee on Engineering Education, working on the Technologically Speaking and the Engineer 2020 projects. She is currently a member of the National Research Council's Board on Education and the Women in Academic Science Engineering Committee. She has supervised 66 MS projects/theses, 26 doctoral dissertations and numerous undergraduate researchers.See Authors Posts (387) · December 9th, 2007 · 1 Comment
Today in History- December 9, 1953 – General Electric announces it will fire all Communist employees. McCarthy’s Un-American hearings had huge impact across the United States in political, industrial and academic spheres. By the early fifties, many powerful employers (General Electric, Westinghouse, R.C.A., Bethlehem Steel, U.S. Steel, to name only a very few), and indeed, whole industries, proclaimed a new ground for automatic discharge or suspension — being an uncooperative witness, or a variant thereof.” General Electric’s announcement was part of larger trend. At the University of California, faculty were required to sign a “loyalty oath” and those who refused to sign were fired. Lawrence Berkeley Lab’s Robert Oppenheimer’s politics were brought into question and led to his undoing at the hands of the Atomic Energy Commission this year. Vannevar Bush, a leader in engineering education and civilian military research, testified in defense of Oppenheimer and warned that: the hearing ran the danger of “being interpreted as placing a man on trial because he held opinions, which is quite contrary to the American system.” He continued, “If you want to try that case, you can try me. I have expressed strong opinions many times. They have been unpopular opinions at times. When a man is pilloried for doing that, this country is in a severe state. Excuse me, gentlemen, if I become stirred, but I am.”
These events in the 1950s illustrate how a climate of hysteria can challenge the principles of civil liberties, privacy, free speech and tolerance that we hold of value in the United States. No one would argue against the need to protect a citizenry against terrorism, but McCarthyism shows us that the line between patriotism and panic is easily crossed. Today many are concerned that the “Patriot Act†is taking us down the road to McCarthyism and has the potential to stifle open inquiry with Internet monitoring and electronic surveillance. Founded in 1990, the Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF)’s mission is to defend free speech, privacy, innovation, and consumer rights. In particular, they have been on the cutting edge of championing the public interest in every critical battle affecting digital rights.
For more information, see the Engineering Pathway’s resources on the Oppenheimer or free speech and academic freedom. Or browse our educational resources on ethics and social implications of technology.
Readers may be interested in our November 9th blog on Ernest Lawrence awarded Nobel Prize in physics for the cyclotron. Or the December 3rd blog on Social Implications of Technology.
Tags: Computer Science · Computing · General Engineering, Engineering Science · Information Systems · Information Technology · Nuclear Engineering · Software Engineering
1 response so far ↓
1 Robin // Jan 11, 2008 at 9:28 am
OK, well what about today, today? Is anybody aware of the story run on FOX News regarding GE’s activities in Iran and Syria? Hmm so much for patriotism and supporting your country. . . so where are the stock holders on this one?
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