Bucks County Community College: Ideological Loyalty Oath for Professors

Professor of Sociology Myles Kelleher contacted FIRE after discovering that applicants for new faculty (and other) positions at Bucks County Community College (BCCC) would be required to "provide a brief statement of your commitment to diversity and how this commitment is demonstrated in your work," and to "certify" their understanding that "any false or misleading statement on this application constitutes sufficient grounds for dismissal." FIRE appealed to the court of public and moral opinion and wrote to BCCC's Board of Trustees and its major donors. The story became the focus of local and national. Due to FIRE's efforts this threat to liberty and privacy was overturned.

    Case Materials

  • "Loyalty Oath Overturned at a Pennsylvania College," March 12, 2001: Six months after the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education helped slay a manifestly unconstitutional loyalty oath at Monterey Peninsula College in California, FIRE returned to overturn a similar threat to authentic liberty and privacy at Bucks County Community College (BCCC) in Newtown, Pennsylvania. The threat had been called to FIRE's attention by a professor at the college. Alan Charles Kors, President of FIRE, commented: "Individual liberty, for all, is the deepest American aspiration. It is the great cause of our time. We are privileged to have been at the side of its intrepid ally at BCCC."
  • "Letter to Bucks County Community College," February 22, 2001