Trouble in Big Sky’s Ivory Tower: The
Montana Tenure Dispute of 1937–1939
Rosalee McReynolds
One of the most publicized tenure disputes in the history of American
higher education began with a censorship controversy. In September 1935,
Montana’s Board of Education ordered the removal of ‘‘offensive literature’’
from libraries of the state’s public universities and thereby touched
off a storm of criticism. Philip Keeney, the librarian at Montana State
University in Missoula (now called the University of Montana), soon
became the most outspoken and visible critic of the board’s decision.
He further antagonized the board by opposing its choice for Montana
State University’s president and by attempting to form a chapter of the
American Federation of Teachers. After he was fired without due process
in 1937, his two-year battle to be reinstated became a national cause
ce´le`bre and helped to define the legal limits of academic freedom and
tenure.
When Philip Keeney celebrated his fortieth birthday in February 1931,
he had little reason to be optimistic about the future. He was an aging
doctoral student with no professional reputation and had few chances of
finding a good academic job as universities throughout the United States
cut positions in response to a sagging economy.1 With hard times getting
harder, he could count himself lucky to be securely employed as an assistant
librarian at the University of Michigan. Keeney could not have
dreamed as he observed his life’s symbolic midpoint that in a few months
he would hold a full professorship as the director of an academic library
in Montana. This unlikely scenario included a 60 percent increase in his
salary at a time when America’s unemployment rate was climbing. Even
more remote was the idea that within five years he and his future employer
would be embroiled in a dispute which would test the limits of
academic freedom and tenure.
The events that took Keeney westward began that spring with the
death of the librarian at Montana State University in Missoula.2 After
twenty-eight years in the position, Gertrude Buckhous had become a
fixture, and the administration was at a loss to replace her. President
Charles Clapp sought guidance in locating suitable candidates by
appealing to Sidney Mitchell, head of the library school at the University
of California in Berkeley. Clapp closed his inquiry by asking if it would
164 L&C/Montana Tenure Dispute
Librarian P.O. Keeney.
be better to hire a man or a woman, a question Mitchell addressed headon:
‘‘On the whole a university seems better off with a man librarian
and the college with a woman. The faculty undoubtedly prefer dealing
with a man and it is also true that personal relations are generally easier
and personnel troubles less frequent where a man heads the
organization.’’3
Unfortunately for Clapp, Mitchell could recommend any number of
capable women, but cautioned that male librarians were a rare and
sought-after species who could choose the best jobs. Not many of them,
Mitchell believed, would move to remote Montana to head a library
whose collection was at best ‘‘medium-sized.’’ He could offer only one
reasonably qualified male who might be willing to take the job, his former
student Philip Keeney.
As it turned out, Keeney was more than willing; he was avid. Once
alerted to the opening, he wasted no time pursuing his opportunity. By
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September he arrived in Missoula for an interview, and within days he
was the new head librarian at Montana State University.
Keeney’s move to Montana marked the second time he had gone west.
At the age of twenty-two, following an accident and a bout with typhoid,
the Connecticut native had dropped out of MIT and moved to California
to recuperate. Between 1913 and 1923, he owned an olive grove near
Chico, a curious choice of occupation since his upbringing as a shopkeeper’s
son hardly qualified him for farming. He managed to survive if
not prosper on the land, but after ten hardscrabble years he sought new
options, enrolled at the University of California in Berkeley, and completed
a bachelor’s degree in history in 1925. Ambivalent about going
into teaching because of a slight speech impediment, Keeney then broadened
his career prospects by completing a certificate in librarianship at
Berkeley in 1927.
After graduation, he moved on to his first library job as the supervisor
of a reading room at the University of Michigan, and was soon promoted
to assistant order librarian. In his free time he took courses at the university,
enabling him to earn a master’s degree in library science in 1930
and to work toward a doctorate in history. It was a life with few diversions,
but one that would change radically after Keeney met and married
Mary Jane Daniels in 1929. In contrast to the retiring Keeney, she was
strong willed and energetic.
Although she disrupted his uncomplicated existence, many who knew
Keeney agreed that his wife was his greatest asset. Mary Jane made a
positive first impression on Keeney’s colleagues as a brilliant young
woman who, because she was a skilled bibliographer, could ably assist
her husband.4 She never completed college but had taken several courses
at the University of Chicago where she was admitted on an honor scholarship
in 1915. Like her husband, she had left school after a battle with
illness and, according to her memoirs, spent the years between 1920 and
1927 as an invalid.5
A scarlet fever epidemic had swept the dormitory where Mary Jane
lived, and there is no reason to doubt that she fell victim to the illness.
However, her actual whereabouts during the early 1920s are hazy. When
she applied for a passport in 1945, she admitted to having been married
during the time she supposedly was recuperating in her mother’s home.
According to information she provided in the application, she divorced
her first husband, Legare George, in 1928,6 but there is no record of this
divorce at the clerk of court’s office in Los Angeles where she claimed
the marriage was dissolved.7 In her memoirs, Mary Jane never alluded
to having been married before she met Philip, and she concealed this
fact from even her closest friends.8
166 L&C/Montana Tenure Dispute
Mary Jane Keeney, courtesy of NYT Pictures.
During these ‘‘lost’’ years, she taught herself foreign languages and
became immersed in history and philosophy. She also furthered an interest,
first awakened while she was a student, in the Soviet experiment
in government. Intrigued by the events that lead to the Russian
monarchy’s demise, Mary Jane became fascinated with social and political
movements. After the First World War, she thought of herself
as a progressive of the LaFollette stripe, but her transition to radicalism
was fueled by the failure of the British Labor government in
1924 and by the execution of Sacco and Vanzetti in 1927. As Mary
Jane told it, when she emerged from the sickroom at age thirty she
was a confirmed leftist. Like many of her generation, she would ride
through the 1930s openly espousing liberal and radical causes, only to
be caught up in the anti-Communist backlash that followed the Second
World War.
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By the spring of 1928, Mary Jane had arrived in Michigan where she
organized the library of entrepreneur and politician Albert May Todd,
known as the ‘‘peppermint king of Kalamazoo’’ because of his cultivation
of aromatic herbs. During the fifteen months that she worked for him,
she claimed to have cataloged his entire collection of 25,000 rare books,
many of them in languages she had not taught herself.9 After accomplishing
this possibly exaggerated feat, she moved on to Ann Arbor,
where she got a job at the University of Michigan and soon made the
acquaintance of Philip Keeney.
Beyond a mutual interest in books and libraries the pair had much in
common, not least of which was a solid middle-class upbringing. The
daughter of a pharmacist, Mary Jane sniffed at Philip’s ‘‘petit bourgeois
background much like my own,’’ and decided that he needed some rehabilitating
when she first met him. A vivid memory of her future husband
was that he was ‘‘a humanist of the Irving Babbitt school, a thinker
rather than a man of action.’’ A large part of their courtship was taken
up in her efforts to guide him to a more radical line of thought, and in
time he came to share most of her views. Given that they were librarians,
it is not surprising that books played a major role in this process: ‘‘We
began with Gibbon,’’ said Mary Jane, ‘‘and progressed to Marx.’’10
Perhaps the side of their natures that favorably disposed them to Marx
also attracted them to librarianship. Sociologist Nathan Glazer speculates
that Depression Era members of ‘‘certain intellectual occupations
(teaching, social work, librarianship)’’ were likely to drift toward communism
‘‘because these occupations combine professional status without
the income or prestige that might make the members of these occupations
supporters of the status quo.’’11 To buttress his theory, Glazer
points to Alice Bryan’s report on the public librarian which indicates that
in the spring of 1948, even as conservatism was on the rise nationwide,
17 percent of librarians preferred socialist, communist, or progressive
candidates for president, ‘‘suggesting a rather leftist group.’’12
Mary Jane may have raised her husband’s political consciousness, but
she did little to further his career in Missoula. She had open contempt
for the town, regarding it as a hopeless backwater, even though it served
as the cultural and commercial hub of the surrounding region. It was
not the cowboys, miners, and farmers who put her off nearly so much as
the local gentry. These people, having little sympathy with her politics,
she dismissed as xenophobes jealous of her intellect and sophisticated
lifestyle.13 She especially believed they were unduly suspicious of her
motives in serving exotic foods: ‘‘I had been giving my guests borscht for
several years before I learned that I was actually offending people by so
doing. . . .They read into this act on my part, an act which had the
168 L&C/Montana Tenure Dispute
innocent basis that I happened to have Spode dishes of a matching color,
an over-fondness for Russia.’’14
Repelled though they were by Missoula’s bourgeoisie, the Keeneys apparently
never sought the alternative company of the town’s proletariat.
Instead, they drifted into activities befitting a faculty couple, such as
planning literary programs for the Missoula Women’s Club, editing a
poetry column for The Montana Woman, and attending garden parties of
people they supposedly disdained. Perhaps the only pastimes that truly
appealed to them were the ‘‘salons’’ they hosted or attended at the
homes of their few friends, where the evening’s entertainment consisted
of intellectual discussions and literary readings.
While they managed to find a social niche, the Keeneys still gained
reputations as people of poor judgment among Missoula’s town and
gown. On one occasion tongues wagged when Philip appeared to be intoxicated
at a local cafe. In another incident that became known as ‘‘the
failed cocktail party,’’ the Keeneys lent their apartment to a visiting
professor who needed a place to host an entertainment for a writers’
conference. Matters got out of hand, and what began as a simple reception
ended with some of the guests going downtown and having a public
brawl.
Even when the Keeneys engaged in more cultured events they had a
way of offending people. At a book reading in another faculty member’s
home, Mary Jane appalled many of those present by reciting profane
passages from Robert Cantwell’s Land of Plenty. Her behavior also reflected
negatively on Philip, causing some people to doubt whether he
should be entrusted with choosing books read by impressionable young
students.
These doubts were aired during ‘‘the troubles’’ that arose at Montana
State University after President Clapp died in May 1935. It seemed he
had possessed a knack for holding dissent at bay, a skill that became
abundantly clear following his death. Campus factions, simmering for
years, quickly manifested themselves. Young professors voiced resentment
against their older colleagues, resentment that was reciprocated;
poorly paid teachers vented frustrations over perceived salary inequities;
and, most importantly for Philip Keeney, the socially and politically conservative
majority lined up against the liberal minority.
Keeney fell into the latter camp, but despite the perception that he
was a wild-eyed radical he took a conventional approach to his job. He
spent most of his small budget on textbooks for specific courses. Indeed,
the only vaguely radical acts he committed during his early years as
librarian were subscribing to New Masses and instituting a program called
169
the ‘‘Open Shelf,’’ a prominently displayed bookcase in the library containing
literature and nonfiction that Keeney bought with his few discretionary
funds. Avant-garde novels and books about socialism were
well-represented, but they rested alongside standard histories, biographies,
and science books. Despite reservations about Keeney’s judgment,
the Open Shelf excited little comment until it became unexpectedly interwoven
with the search for Montana State University’s new president.
Already fraught with tension, the search became even more heated
when Missoula’s most powerful businessmen, informally known as the
Downtown Group, decided they wanted to take part in selecting Clapp’s
successor. The faculty, painfully aware of previous corporate interference
in the state’s higher education system, was outraged. Many of them recalled
the years after the First World War when the newly established
American Association of University Professors (AAUP) investigated three
separate cases in which free speech on the campus appeared to have
been suppressed by big business. In all three instances, the AAUP concluded
that freedom of expression indeed had been violated.15 This was
particularly significant since most cases investigated by the AAUP during
this period fell into the category of economic, not free speech, disputes.16
The last of these investigations occurred in 1921, just after Charles
Clapp assumed office, and it proved to be the last major crisis of his
comparatively peaceful administration.
While many people wanted a hand in choosing the president, the
power to do so was wielded solely by the State Board of Education, which
oversaw Montana’s public colleges and universities. It consisted of the
governor as chairman, eight of his appointees, the state attorney general,
and the superintendent of public instruction. Conscious of the tensions
at the campus, the board suggested that it would be best to fill the job
with an out-of-state candidate. Since the university’s internal differences
were clearly irresolvable, a majority of the faculty agreed with this idea.
The Downtown Group also expressed support for the plan.
At least one person found the compromise unacceptable, however,
since the presidency was a big plum to be exported out of job-starved
Montana. John Morris, a former history instructor who had struggled to
make a living on a farm near Missoula after losing his job at the university,
believed that he could snap up the appointment to head the
school. He insinuated his way into the board’s September 1935 meeting
by convincing the governor that he had something important to say and
when given the floor, he launched into a tirade about the low moral
character of campus life at Montana State University. To make his point,
he began reading passages from Vardis Fisher’s Passions Spin the Plot, a
book he had found on the library’s Open Shelf. The selection of this
novel was probably no accident since Fisher, a writer who enjoyed a
170 L&C/Montana Tenure Dispute
national reputation during the 1930s, was the visiting professor who had
hosted the notorious failed cocktail party at the Keeneys’ apartment.
Morris also clearly chose the book for its potential shock value since it
dealt frankly with a young man’s emotional reaction to the discovery that
his fiance´e was more sexually experienced than he.
Morris’s goal of convincing the board that standards would be raised
under his leadership was not realized. Instead, his listeners cringed as
the recitation continued unabated. To hush Morris, one of the board
members interrupted and proposed banning Passions Spin the Plot ‘‘and
all books of a similar character’’ from university libraries throughout the
state.17 The resolution quickly passed, and Morris was ejected. Provoked
by an awkward situation, the board failed to consider the implications
of the resolution; they certainly did not see themselves as censors.18
For Philip Keeney, it was a different story. Upon being informed of
the resolution, he treated it at face value, notified the board that he had
removed Passions Spin the Plot from his library, and asked for further
advice on identifying ‘‘what other books should be removed from the
shelves.’’19 He received only silence in reply for three months, which he
might have perceived as a snub. His subsequent behavior could have been
the reaction to this seeming insult, or it is possible that he intended to
organize a protest from the moment he heard of the resolution. In any
event, by October he was collaborating on a petition calling for the board
to reconsider its action.
The strategy for gathering signatures was handled by Stephenson
Smith, a University of Oregon professor who had befriended Keeney
while teaching in Missoula. Smith also might have composed the text of
the petition which, instead of calling upon the board simply to rescind
the censorship motion, suggested that problem literature be transferred
to ‘‘the vault or lock shelf’’ from which it would be issued only to mature
students by a faculty member or the librarian.20 As this was a common
practice at the time, it is unclear whether he was being sincere or sarcastic,
but there can be little doubt that Smith was provoking his intended
audience with the statement, ‘‘We recognize that your Board is
the authorized spokesman for the moral convictions and tastes of the
people of Montana, and we do not for one moment mean to call in
question your final jurisdiction in these matters.’’21
To hone the element of surprise, Smith did not circulate the petition
in Montana, so board members had no idea that a controversy was brewing.
While this method of protest was somewhat jejune, it protected
Keeney, since open criticism of university administrators was not viewed
as the stuff of academic freedom during the 1930s. This was true even
in public institutions, where legal protections for such expression were
171
largely undefined until the 1960s.22 If Keeney had been overt in his behavior,
he could have been treated as nothing more than a troublemaker
and summarily dismissed.
Even obvious clues to the scheme might have been ignored since the
board was fixed on one goal as 1935 drew to a close: finding a new
president for Montana State University. The search had bogged down
when no suitable out-of-state applicants emerged, largely because of the
job’s uncompetitive annual salary of $5,460 and a residence.23 As the
academic community scratched its collective head in dismay, the Downtown
Group saw an opportunity to press for its presidential choice, a
young assistant professor of zoology whose doctorate was less than a year
old when he came to teach at the university in 1934.
George Simmons had been formally presented as a candidate, but his
lack of experience, not to mention his friendliness with the Downtown
Group, made him an inconceivable one in the minds of the faculty. Missoula’s
business interests were far less concerned with his academic credentials
because they wanted to fill the presidency with a highly visible
booster. A handsome man with a record of lively speechmaking at Rotary
Club meetings, Simmons was their logical choice. His biography read
like an adventure story and included jobs as a police reporter, a Red
Cross ambulance driver during the First World War, and the director of
a voyage to collect specimens for the Cleveland Museum of Natural
History.24
Knowing the furor that would greet any serious consideration of
Simmons, the Downtown Group quietly courted the board. At its December
meeting, when pivotal members opposing Simmons were out of the
state, his allies seized the opportunity, and he was hastily selected as the
university’s president. The faculty were horrified, and among the outraged
was Philip Keeney, who took it upon himself to circulate a petition,
this time openly, calling upon the board to rethink its choice of president.
But there would be no reconsideration because Montana’s governor, one
of the absent board members who opposed Simmons, suddenly died a
few days after the vote, removing the spotlight from Simmons.
Demoralized faculty suspended their effort to recall Simmons, but not
before he had a chance to size up his enemies, boding ill for Keeney.
The very sight of the librarian, Simmons once said, made him ‘‘unhappy.’’
25 This reaction may have been colored by their political differences
and certainly by the fact that Keeney had led the opposition to
Simmons’s presidency, but in the minds of some it was largely prompted
by Keeney’s personal appearance.26 As physical types Simmons and
Keeney were at opposite ends of a spectrum. In contrast to Simmons,
who had the looks and carriage of a matinee idol, Keeney was stooped
172 L&C/Montana Tenure Dispute
George Finlay Simmons, courtesy University of
Montana.
and balding. To further complicate matters, Simmons had been present
at Mary Jane’s reading of Land of Plenty, and he regarded her as a woman
of exceptionally poor taste.27
At the same meeting where the board elected Simmons, Keeney’s request
for help in identifying ‘‘unsuitable’’ books was finally taken under
consideration. Missing any irony in the request, the board replied
through its executive secretary, H. H. Swain, that the resolution would
come to nothing. Swain assured him that ‘‘the entire incident will remain
closed unless an effort should be made from outside the Board to reopen
it.’’28 The reply, no matter how well-intentioned, arrived too late to prevent
fallout from the anticensorship petition which had been signed by
sixty professors in Washington and Oregon.
Although the petition was originally intended for the board, Stephenson
Smith decided to send it to George Simmons instead. Simmons had
nothing to do with the resolution to ban Passions Spin the Plot, but Smith
could not resist the opportunity to play the gadfly. He attached a letter
to the petition urging the president to challenge the very people who
had just put him in office: ‘‘It is my hope,’’ wrote Smith, ‘‘that you will
act on this matter and see that the proper modification of the Board’s
order is made. . . .’’29
173
Recognizing that Smith was testing him to see if he would choose the
principle of academic freedom over loyalty to his political supporters,
Simmons framed his reply carefully. In defense of the board members,
he argued that censorship was not their intent and suggested that the
instigators of the petition would have been better served by dealing directly
with the individuals who had voted for the resolution.30 Smith then
did just that, sending the petition to each board member, along with a
letter chronicling the history and folly of censorship. Since most of them
were business people or politicians, Smith seemed to believe they would
not understand the threat to intellectual freedom inherent in their action,
so he appealed to them with the argument that books often increase
their sales after being condemned.31
If Smith’s purpose was to aid Philip Keeney in the defeat of book
banning, the results were disastrous. The calm tone of Simmons’s reply
to Smith simply masked his rage. Simmons was further irritated when,
nine days after taking office, he was presented with another anticensorship
petition signed by four hundred students and faculty members from
the local campus. The appearance of this second petition convinced
Simmons that he must assert his authority, and like the hapless John
Morris he decided that the moral tone of the campus had to be improved.
The first object of the president’s efforts was a student production of
Ah, Wilderness, which raised his ire because it included a character who
was a prostitute. That a young female student would be cast in this role
was unthinkable for Simmons, and to his relief the head of the drama
department agreed to substitute another play. No less a target of the
purge was H. G. Merriam, the editor of the university’s literary magazine
Frontier and Midland, who impressed Simmons as dangerously liberal. Because
he was chairman of the English Department where both Vardis
Fisher and Stephenson Smith had been visiting professors in the past,
Simmons also suspected that Merriam had instigated the anticensorship
petitions.32
By misdirecting suspicion at Merriam, Simmons failed to immediately
grasp the depth of Keeney’s involvement in the anticensorship campaign.
The truth began to unfold in March 1936 after an article appeared in a
widely circulated West Coast publication, Pacific Weekly. The author,
James Steele, criticized the board’s censorship action and the questionable
process by which Simmons had been placed in office. Readers were
urged to express their disapproval of the resolution to ban Passions Spin
the Plot by complaining to the same university president that the article
had mercilessly discredited.33
After a brief investigation, Simmons discovered that James Steele was
a pseudonym. The editor of Pacific Weekly refused to identify the author,
but divulged that information for the article had originated with the
174 L&C/Montana Tenure Dispute
librarian at Montana State University. If Keeney’s star began to fall at
this point, it crashed in April when all the newspapers in Montana received
a letter from a J. Ryan, who called himself the secretary-treasurer
of the Alumni Progressive League of Montana. Ryan claimed that this
organization objected to censorship on the Missoula campus and wanted
it stopped immediately. Appended to Ryan’s letter was a mimeographed
copy of the Pacific Weekly article. Like Steele, J. Ryan and the Progressive
Alumni League turned out to be fictitious.34 Believing with good reason
that Keeney lay at the heart of these matters, Simmons began taking
steps to rid himself of the man he found so troublesome.
The first sign of the president’s intentions appeared in Keeney’s contract
for the 1936–1937 academic year, the sixth he had received since
being hired in 1931. As standardized forms, all had contained the same
language, including a list of the board’s regulations for hiring, tenuring,
and dismissing professors. But there was an important difference
between this contract and the previous five: stricken from it was the
clause granting automatic tenure to full professors after three years of
service.35
On the advice of a lawyer, a fearful Keeney added the words ‘‘by signing
this contract, I am not in any way putting my permanent tenure in
jeopardy’’ next to his signature. Four months later, Simmons informed
him that the notation had no legal effect. He further insisted that—
despite what Keeney’s five years of service as a full professor might imply—
he had been on one-year contracts since being hired by Charles
Clapp in 1931, and there was no guarantee that they would be renewed
indefinitely.36
The path Simmons ultimately would take was unclear at that point,
the summer of 1936. He later divulged that he had wanted to fire Keeney
outright instead of giving him a contract of any kind, but had listened
to cooler heads who warned him that this would lead to more campus
turmoil.37 Simmons appeared to embrace this advice, for even as he issued
his warning to Keeney, the president held out an olive branch by
telling him ‘‘I am anxious to work out our mutual problems.’’ He went
so far as to say that things were beginning to go well between the two
of them, but left no doubt that the upcoming academic year would be
crucial in determining Keeney’s future.38 Impressed by the warning,
Keeney kept a low profile throughout the rest of the year, searching
unsuccessfully for a new job and protecting the one he had by kowtowing
to Simmons.
It is hard to imagine a more onerous situation for Keeney because it
meant surviving in an increasingly repressive atmosphere. In April 1936
Simmons persuaded the board to rescind the resolution banning Passions
Spin the Plot, and, instead, to set up review committees at Montana’s
175
public universities, with each president and faculty body responsible for
maintaining ‘‘proper standards’’ in the selection of library materials and
in the production of student plays. Although varnished with language
giving teachers control over the universities’ intellectual climate, this
new resolution actually compromised them with a clause demanding
‘‘proper cooperation from all concerned in the type of plays performed
and in the character of material used in student and faculty publications,
in order that a proper high level of good taste and public decorum may
obtain.’’39
One of the new resolution’s provisions was that ‘‘any writings found
unsuitable for immature student reading shall not be admitted to the
general or open shelves of the library,’’40 so Keeney inevitably came under
scrutiny. In deference to Simmons’s warning against stressing ‘‘isms’’
in the library, Keeney voluntarily purged a dozen potentially controversial
books.41 So deftly had Simmons forced Keeney’s hand that this advocate
of intellectual freedom became a censor himself. When he was
not removing parts of the library’s collection from public view, he applied
himself to his duties. Not once during the 1936–1937 academic year did
Simmons indicate that he was displeased with Keeney.
Unaware of Keeney’s predicament, a representative of the American
Federation of Teachers (AFT) contacted him in January 1937 and asked
if he would be interested in forming a chapter of the union at Montana
State University.42 Primarily aimed at school teachers, the AFT had only
a couple of dozen university chapters and was trying to increase its membership
within higher education. One of the signers of Stephenson
Smith’s anticensorship petition had suggested that Keeney would be a
good organizer, but as the librarian regretfully explained, he couldn’t
possibly engage in such activities. Besides, he had tried to rally the faculty
to unionize just after Simmons had taken office. Even then, the
atmosphere at the university was so charged that Keeney could not find
a single recruit. ‘‘I am enormously interested,’’ Keeney wrote to the AFT,
‘‘and do not think that I will lay down if there is the slightest chance to
get a chapter here.’’43
If Keeney’s life had been the staged melodrama it was beginning to
resemble, the timely arrival of the letter from the AFT would have foreshadowed
action soon to come. Within two months he had reversed himself
and was scouring the Missoula campus for the signatures needed to
start a chapter. He abruptly changed his demeanor, said Keeney, because
other faculty members had approached him with interest in the union.44
Between 31 March and 6 April he collected more than two dozen names
and was arranging for an AFT organizer to come to Missoula. On the
seventh day of the month he received a letter from Simmons informing
him that his services as librarian were no longer desired; Keeney’s
176 L&C/Montana Tenure Dispute
contract for the 1937–1938 academic year would not be renewed.45 A few
days later, Simmons’s action was confirmed by a majority vote of the
board of education.46
Keeney immediately charged that his efforts to form an AFT local had
led to his dismissal, a serious accusation since the newly ratified Wagner
Act enjoined employers from dismissing workers engaged in union organizing.
Simmons, knowing the law and prepared for Keeney’s strategy,
rebutted that the teachers union had nothing to do with it. It was extremely
important for Simmons to assert that the decision to let Keeney
go was based on his incompetence as a librarian and disruptive behavior
unrelated to the union.47
Simmons was in fact eager to present himself as a friend of the working
man because organized labor was a powerful force in the legislature,
one as influential as big business in determining which towns and institutions
received state contracts. Using the conservative Daily Missoulian
as his medium, he announced that he had no desire to antagonize labor
and that a teachers union would be welcomed at Montana State University.
48 This gesture by Simmons was never taken seriously and instead
was overshadowed by rumors that he was conspiring with industry moguls
to break up the new AFT chapter, which continued to have the
support of many faculty members despite Keeney’s dismissal. Montana’s
liberal congressman, Jerry O’Connell, spoke for many of his political
allies when he wrote to Simmons in the wake of the rumors, ‘‘I feel that
the State University has always been a very reactionary institution, that
it has always been completely controlled and dominated by the Anaconda
Company and the other corporate interests in Montana.’’49
Luckily for Keeney, Montana’s labor sector responded with an outpouring
of support for him, and in very little time solidarity around him
grew into a movement. By the summer of 1937, scores of written protests,
mostly from white and blue collar unions throughout the United States,
flooded Simmons and the board. With the help of labor the deposed
librarian gained the courage to fight for his job through the courts, and
his resolve grew as the American Civil Liberties Union and the American
Association of University Professors took an active interest in the case.
In June 1937, for the first time in over fifteen years, the AAUP would
send a team to Montana to investigate the possibility that academic
freedom was under assault.
Many individual librarians also spoke up on Keeney’s behalf, but the
American Library Association, the organization most representative of
Keeney’s professional interests, distanced itself from the case. To this
day, the ALA’s reluctance to act remains perplexing, since Keeney’s dismissal
emerged from the suppression of a book, a matter of natural
interest to the association. The case also was extremely timely, for by
177
the late 1930s librarianship was consciously evolving into a profession
with the mission of providing a comprehensive and balanced body of
literature to the public. As Evelyn Geller has put it,
In 1876, when the American Library Association was formed, its
leaders avoided controversial literature and endorsed the librarian
as moral censor. In 1939, when the association adopted its first
Library Bill of Rights, the librarian was defined as the guardian of
the freedom to read.50
This bill of rights, which emphasized the obligation of librarians to represent
‘‘all sides of questions on which differences of opinion exist,’’51
originated in the public library sector, but its implications for academe
were obvious. The Keeney case, which played out as the thinking that
led to this ‘‘manifesto’’ reached its critical mass, provided the ALA with
a forum to flex its organizational muscle and to proclaim the profession’s
changing identity. In 1936 the ALA had laid the practical foundation for
reviewing disputes like Keeney’s, when the executive board gave the association’s
Committee on Salaries, Staff, and Service jurisdiction to investigate
unjustified dismissals in libraries. In the summer of 1937, the
committee’s name was changed to the Board on Salaries, Staff, and Tenure,
further indicating the ALA’s sense of duty to members with employment
problems.
Keeney’s expectation that the ALA was prepared to investigate his
case were reinforced by a warm personal letter sent to him by executive
director Carl Milam in response to the publicity drifting out of Montana.
Milam compared Keeney’s dismissal with that three decades earlier of
Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Vernon Parrington from the University
of Oklahoma ‘‘to their everlasting disgrace.’’52 Milam also counseled
Keeney to keep him informed of further developments and expressed
hope that ‘‘ALA might find some way to make the administration at
Montana squirm.’’53
It soon became clear that these gestures by the ALA were without
teeth or heart. Just three weeks after Milam wrote his letter, Paul North
Rice, chairman of the Committee on Salaries, Staff, and Service, informed
Keeney that it had no money to cover investigations ‘‘as has the
A.A.U.P.’’54 Rice further implied that he was suspicious of Keeney’s integrity
as a librarian:
I have no sympathy with any censorship of books in a college library
which stress a different point of view than that of the administration,
but neither have I sympathy, and I assume that with this you
178 L&C/Montana Tenure Dispute
will concur, with using a college library for propaganda. As an individual
you should have been free to express any opinions, no matter
how much at variance they were with the administration. As a
librarian you should have been entirely neutral in all contraversial
[sic] matters.55
Rice also asked Keeney to explain away the university’s position that he
was on annual appointment and could be dismissed at any time. Rice’s
insights into that position can be attributed to a letter George Simmons
had sent to the ALA headquarters in which he argued his side of the
case and assailed Keeney’s character. This letter was a copy of one
Simmons had written to the AAUP as the formal explanation of why
Keeney’s contract had gone unrenewed.56 Sharing this correspondence
with the ALA was a violation of AAUP protocol, but that did little to
lessen its damage.
Before Keeney could respond to the questions and implications raised
in the letter, ALA president-elect Milton Ferguson had published an editorial
in the June 1937 Library Journal suggesting that Simmons, not
Keeney, was the wronged party. Ferguson casually stated that Keeney
was a socialist and repeated a claim made by Simmons that the fired
librarian threatened to ‘‘spread his case and our difficulties in every radical
sheet across the country’’ if his contract were not renewed.57
Ferguson further questioned the right of any librarian to ignore the opinions
and wishes of higher authority, and wondered ‘‘how far will academic
freedom and right of free speech permit a faculty member to
project his personal convictions into college affairs and the administration
of the library.’’58
The 15 June 1937 issue of Library Journal went to press without Keeney
having the slightest chance to establish his side of the story. To add
insult to injury, Keeney learned of Ferguson’s editorial as did most readers
of Library Journal—when his issue arrived in the mail. A stunned
Keeney immediately fired off a rebuttal to Ferguson, and although
Keeney’s anger was evident, he showed considerable restraint, probably
because he still hoped to garner the ALA’s support. He denied being a
socialist ‘‘in the sense that I am a member of that party. I am a member
of no party.’’59 But he conceded that he belonged to the American Civil
Liberties Union and the American League against War and Fascism,
‘‘both of which have been described by President Simmons as ‘communistic’
organizations.’’ Keeney also enclosed a list of books on the Open
Shelf, demonstrating its balanced nature, and pointed out that he had
complied with Simmons’s every wish about library purchases.60
Despite the shabby manner in which Keeney had been treated, he
asked Ferguson for only one concession: to be given the opportunity to
179
present his side of the story in an upcoming issue of Library Journal, a
request that Ferguson could hardly reject. ‘‘I will be pleased to urge the
editor to print any brief statement you may send her,’’ wrote Ferguson
to Keeney.61 It is doubtful that he followed through on this promise,
however, since Library Journal’s editor, Bertine Weston, turned Keeney
down flat when he asked her to print his response:
I can not agree with you in feeling that Dr. Ferguson has done you
such grievous injury and I can not feel that you will be able to
prove anything merely by writing letters to the Library Journal or
other library organizations. Frankly, I feel that you would be much
better off if nothing further about you appears in any magazines
until the matter is investigated by a properly constituted
committee.62
Paul Rice also chided Keeney for objecting to the editorial, describing
the protest as intemperate and regrettable.63 In the same letter in which
Rice delivered this scolding, he actually gave Keeney some heartening
news. The Committee on Salaries, Staff, and Service had sent letters to
Simmons and the board of education stating that Keeney had not received
a fair hearing.64 Rice also told him that the newly formed ALA
Staff Organizations Round Table (SORT) had passed a resolution supporting
his right to a hearing. Over time, SORT continued to be outspoken
on Keeney’s behalf, but it carried far less clout than the ALA’s
executive officers.
What can account for the ALA’s reluctance to get involved with the
Keeney case? The official explanation that the association had no money
for investigations is hard to countenance. In 1937 the ALA’s budget was
some eight times greater than that of the AAUP, but unlike the faculty
organization, most of the ALA’s treasury was built from sources other
than its members’ dues.65 As they were beholden to any number of individuals
and foundations outside of librarianship, the ALA’s officers
could not automatically act on behalf of colleagues who faced dire consequences
for living by their professional creed. To do so risked offending
donors whose positions on censorship were unpredictable. This dilemma
has remained with the association well into the recent past,66 weakening
its ability to affect national or local policies on intellectual freedom.
The stance assumed by the ALA’s officers reflects both a deference to
outside authority and an ambivalence to issues of censorship. It also
illustrates the gulf between the conservative elite of the organization and
the far more liberal librarians like those Nathan Glazer describes. The
Staff Organizations Round Table members represented the latter element
and their endorsement of Keeney did nothing to raise his stock at
180 L&C/Montana Tenure Dispute
ALA headquarters. Disaffection between these sectors only increased
when in his 1938 inaugural address Milton Ferguson counseled librarians
to avoid unionization to achieve their professional ends.67 With this
speech, Ferguson alienated many SORT members who were already
members of labor organizations and made it clear that he disapproved
of Keeney’s effort to form an AFT local.
With or without the endorsement of his professional association’s
elites, Keeney had ample encouragement to continue with a lawsuit
against Simmons and the board of education. The Montana Federation
of Labor, convinced that the case would have far-reaching implications
for the rights of unions, agreed to pay his legal expenses. He also was
armed with the Montana attorney general’s opinion that the dismissal
was illegal for contractual reasons.68 Furthermore, the draft report of
the AAUP’s investigative visit indicated that the association felt that his
dismissal had been mishandled.69 This conclusion was moral in its basis
and was not legally enforceable, but the association’s growing prestige
made its threats of censure potentially embarrassing.
Although Keeney’s basis for legal action was clear enough, it would
have been even more explicit a few decades later when rules governing
academic freedom and tenure were better defined and codified. The
foundation of this ‘‘code’’ is the 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic
Freedom and Tenure, jointly issued by the AAUP and the American Association
of Colleges (AAC). While the principles still are not legally binding,
they now guide the majority of institutions of higher learning in the
United States. At their heart is the professorial right to teach and conduct
research without fear of administrative censorship or retribution.70
The Statement’s guidelines on permanent tenure are explicit about procedure.
Written contracts containing terms of appointment and a sevenyear
probationary period with tenure as the desired result are established
norms. In framing the statement, the AAUP and the AAC agreed that
dismissal of a tenured faculty member should occur only after a rigorous
process in which the principle is served with written charges and given
the option of a hearing with counsel. Teachers accused of incompetence
are to be judged primarily by colleagues, not by university officers. Only
in clear cases of moral turpitude or financial exigency are administrators
given the upper hand.71
As commonplace as these ideas have become, they were quite radical
in the late 1930s, even though the AAUP had issued similar sets of principles
in 1915 and 1925. Between the wars the association worked to gain
their acceptance by recalcitrant university administrators and scholarly
organizations. Only the AAC, mostly comprised of undergraduate institutions,
endorsed the 1915 principles in a timely fashion and worked with
the AAUP to refine the document. The 1940 Statement was endorsed by
181
a handful of learned societies when it was issued, but not until the 1960s
and 1970s did it gain almost universal acceptance within the American
academic community.72
The manner in which Keeney was removed from his job was in keeping
with the prevailing atmosphere in universities of the time. Most professors,
like other workers, served at the pleasure of their employers and
without any special protections. An AAUP survey conducted in the
mid-1930s indicated that nearly half the institutions sampled put all
faculty, regardless of rank or longevity, on annual contracts.73 For institutions
west of the Mississippi the figure was 56 percent, with one-year
contracts being most common among public universities.74
Perhaps Keeney should have known that his position was insecure, but
as it happened, most of the faculty at Montana State University had no
idea if they were on annual, three-year, or permanent appointments,
because these designations were made by the president and a select advisory
committee after signed contracts were returned by faculty members
every year.75 Teachers with permanent status received notices
annually merely to confirm their salaries. Keeney had reason to assume
that he fell into this category since he had been appointed as a full
professor and had been issued more than three contracts with varying
salaries.
President Clapp, perhaps because he was less than completely happy
with his performance, had made Keeney an exception to this general
rule by marking his contract with an ‘‘A’’ (for annual) as opposed to the
‘‘P’’ (for permanent) assigned to more satisfactory professors.76 Keeney
was unaware of this, and neither did he know that the requirement that
he sign a loyalty oath every year indicated his annual status. Permanent
faculty only had to sign it once.77 Due to the manner in which Clapp
had handled the contracts, even the AAUP investigators who were generally
supportive of Keeney admitted that his claims to permanent status
were shaky.78 Clapp’s failure to adhere to the board’s regulations or to
communicate their contractual status to the faculty further demonstrated
the widely held attitude that administrators ‘‘owned’’ the university
and could dictate all terms of employment.
Because of the vagueness of his rights, Keeney’s best hope for keeping
his job initially appeared to be, as the Montana Federation of Labor
contended, that his right to organize a union chapter had been violated.
When his lawyers petitioned on 3 September 1937 in Montana’s First
District Court for Keeney’s reinstatement, they argued that his dismissal
was ‘‘caused solely by reason of his activity in connection with the proposed
formation of said local labor union.’’79
A judge immediately issued a writ of mandamus ordering the board
to reinstate Keeney. This provided him with some momentary comfort,
182 L&C/Montana Tenure Dispute
but his lawyers soon advised him that the board would undoubtedly appeal
the judgment, and that the case might end up in the state supreme
court. As Keeney pessimistically wrote to the president of the AAUP,
‘‘My attorney. . . assures me that I shall win the case on law in the
District Court and lose it by a 3–2 political decision in the Supreme
Court.’’80
In the hearing that resulted from the board’s response to the writ of
mandamus, it became obvious that Keeney’s lawyers could not sustain
the argument that he had been fired because of his union activities.
George Simmons testified convincingly that he was ignorant of Keeney’s
plans to form an AFT local when the list of contract renewals was sent
to the board in late March. Not revealed in court, but further undermining
Keeney’s position, was a letter Simmons received from Charles
Hope, regional director of the National Labor Relations Board (NLRB)
which monitored violations of the Wagner Act. Hope doubted that
Keeney’s case would hold up before the NLRB.81
As the hearing progressed, it wandered farther from the union issue
and centered more around the small print on the contracts that Keeney
had signed between 1931 and 1936. In addition to the stricken paragraph,
there were two board regulations that seemed applicable to him.
One mandated that any attempt to dismiss a tenured professor must be
accompanied by written charges. The other required that the charges be
investigated by a committee made up of three faculty members.82
The similarity between the AAUP’s Statement of Principles and the
board’s own regulations regarding charges and investigations was no
mere coincidence. When the AAUP cited Montana State University for
free speech violations after the First World War, the board had worked
with the association to establish mutually acceptable methods for hiring,
tenuring, and dismissing faculty. These procedures were adopted by the
board in 1918 and revised for the last time in 1922. They had been
printed on faculty contracts every year thereafter but never had been
tested as having the weight of law. This, rather than the union issue,
became the essence of Keeney’s suit, which would drag through the
courts for twenty-seven months.
During that time, Keeney’s paychecks ceased. He and Mary Jane
moved to Berkeley, taking up residence with his sisters. At age forty-six,
his prospects dimmer than ever, Keeney began writing a book outlining
the significance of libraries in world history, an ambitious project that
never came to fruition. It was Mary Jane who kept bread on the table
by taking a job with explorer and writer Victor W. Von Hagen. While
her position was that of an editorial assistant, Mary Jane may have fallen
into her tendency to exaggerate when she claimed to have rewritten his
183
book Ecuador the Unknown. It was a penurious time during which the couple
depleted their savings and sold many possessions.83
In March 1938 the district judge who had issued the first writ of mandamus
issued a second one based on his interpretation of the board’s
regulations, which he felt entitled Keeney to permanent tenure. The
board then appealed to the state supreme court, contending that the
regulations on which the judge had based his decision were void of legal
authority and existed solely for the board’s guidance.84 Its right to select,
retain, or dismiss faculty members could not be limited by rules adopted
by a board comprised of different members twenty years earlier. The
point of mutuality also was used to shore up their argument: if Keeney
could break his contract at any point, so too could the state.85
Keeney’s legal team asserted that the regulations did indeed have the
force of law because the state constitution vested the board with general
control of the university system.86 Refuting the board’s claim that enforcing
the regulations would be an unreasonable surrender of its authority,
his lawyers pointed out that Keeney never had insisted that he
was entitled to lifetime employment. As a member of the permanent
faculty, he simply was entitled to a hearing with charges and an investigation
of his case. As for the point that his contract was void for lack
of mutuality, the Keeney camp prevailed by demonstrating that the precedent
on which this argument was based had been overturned just weeks
before in the U.S. Supreme Court.87
Throughout the appeal the union issue faded into the background but
was never completely lost from sight. The board’s attorneys devoted their
last point to the matter, saying it was a myth that Keeney had been fired
for his efforts to begin an AFT chapter. Keeney’s team made less of it
still, giving it a cursory mention at the conclusion of their brief. Only in
an amicus curiae brief filed by the American Civil Liberties Union was it
argued that Keeney’s organizing activities had led to the board’s refusal
to renew his contract. The ACLU brief also was unique in its use of the
phrase ‘‘academic freedom’’ and its assertion that Keeney’s had been
violated because of retaliation against him for his choice of books for the
library.88
Contrary to Keeney’s expectations, the state supreme court found in
his favor on 17 June 1939. In a decision that mirrored the brief filed by
his lawyers, the court ruled that the board’s regulations were legally
binding.89 Consequently, Keeney had earned tenure after signing his
third contract, and his status could not be arbitrarily changed. When
Simmons and the board dismissed Keeney, they erred in failing to serve
him with formal charges and the option of a hearing. Eventually,
Keeney’s ordeal would take its place in the legal canon as an instance
184 L&C/Montana Tenure Dispute
of the right to due process for tenured professors,90 and would be cited
numerous times in the years that followed by college professors and
school teachers seeking reinstatement after being dismissed from their
jobs.91
While it advanced faculty rights, the court’s decision obscured a central
theme of the case: the violation of Keeney’s right to free speech. By
focusing on the failure of the board to follow its own procedures, the
justices only broached the matter of how Keeney was dismissed, but not
why. The question of whether he had the right to criticize the university
administration or to exhibit controversial literature on the library’s
shelves was left unresolved. If Montana’s supreme court justices had
taken a different tack, the case might have ended up in the United States
Supreme Court since it raised First Amendment questions. Not until the
1950s, however, would academic freedom be treated as a constitutional
issue in the high court. Between 1952 and 1989 the Court heard more
than two dozen cases that dealt with the free speech rights of both students
and teachers. With these cases came a greater affirmation of open
expression in the academy.92
As part of an evolutionary process, Keeney’s case falls neatly between
two eras—one practically barren of defined rights for teachers and another
in which their claims to free expression were raised to an almost
sacramental level. For Keeney the court’s judgment meant that he could
go back to his job and collect two years’ salary, but when he returned to
Missoula, broke and in poor health, he found a hostile environment.
George Simmons had obstructed the paperwork needed for Keeney to
get paid and had set up a regimen of petty rules that the librarian was
certain to violate. Simmons undoubtedly intended to put Keeney in a
position where he could be fired again, but through a facade of due
process.
To make matters worse, Keeney had made himself a pariah among
his fellow librarians. Upon realizing that the American Library Association
would not take a stand on his behalf, Philip and Mary Jane started
their own organization, the Progressive Librarians Council (PLC).93
There was never the slightest possibility that the PLC with its two hundred
members would eclipse its huge and long-established rival, but it
proved to be an effective irritant by taking positions contrary to those
that the ALA espoused. Especially annoying was the PLC endorsement
of Franklin Roosevelt’s nomination of Archibald MacLeish to the position
of Librarian of Congress in 1939. The ALA had objected vehemently to
the appointment, arguing that it should go to a professional librarian.
To add insult to injury, MacLeish accepted Keeney’s invitation to address
PLC members while they were meeting in Cincinnati in May of that
year, coinciding with ALA’s annual conference in the same city.
185
Keeney’s career in mainstream librarianship may have been finished,
but he was well served by the PLC endorsement of MacLeish. In 1940
he had a new job at the Library of Congress, and just as importantly he
and Mary Jane found a lifestyle in Washington, D.C. that truly suited
them. There was no shortage of museums, concerts, or interesting food,
and there were plenty of like-minded people for them to befriend. During
the early years of the war, intellectuals with openly leftist views flourished
in federal jobs. Several of them, including economists Herbert
Marcuse and Paul Sweezy, worked in the Research and Analysis Division
of the Office of Strategic Services where Keeney served as librarian.
As long as they were securely entrenched in the civil service system—
Mary Jane got a job with the Foreign Economic Administration—
the Keeneys prospered, especially after the war. Mary Jane joined
an American reparations mission in France, and Philip headed up an
effort to assess damage to, and the future of, public libraries in occupied
Japan. This was the high point of Keeney’s professional life, and his work
won him praise from Japanese librarians. But it all ended abruptly. In
April 1947 he was severed from government service, just as the State
Department was thrown into chaos by accusations that it was harboring
communists. A purge of federal employees had begun, and both Keeneys
fell victim to it. Two years later, they were called before the House
Un-American Activities Committee (HUAC) to answer questions about
their associates and political activities. Throughout their testimony, the
couple repeatedly took the Fifth Amendment or ‘‘drew a blank’’ when
they were asked to implicate other people who could be called by the
HUAC.94
Philip Keeney’s return to a career in librarianship outside of the government
was hopeless, and he never worked within the profession again.
Mary Jane obtained a job with the United Nations in 1948 and was dismissed
in 1951, when the American government pressured Secretary
General Trygve Lie to fire American employees suspected of leftist activities.
For the rest of their lives, Philip and Mary Jane resided in New
York City. Their last major venture was an art theater showcasing folk
singers and subtitled foreign films.
As Philip Keeney’s life came to a close, he could take some cynical
pleasure in knowing that his old nemesis George Simmons had endured
his own share of trouble. Soon after the end of the Montana tenure
dispute, Simmons and the board had differences that resulted in his
removal as president in 1942. He remained on the faculty of the biology
department for two more years before moving to the Loyola University
School of Medicine in Chicago, where he retired in 1948. He died seven
years later.95
186 L&C/Montana Tenure Dispute
Mary Jane survived her husband for seven years, and the traumatic
effect of the tenure dispute remained with her to the end. Just before
her death she was composing ‘‘The Political Persecution of Philip O. and
Mary Jane Keeney,’’ a rambling document that accused an array of people—
from financiers to socialists and ‘‘renegade’’ intellectuals—of
hounding the Keeneys out of public life. For all its eccentricities, it was
a remarkably lucid attempt to make sense of two lives turned upside
down by the events of three decades that began with a fairly innocuous
protest against the removal of one book from a library’s shelves. In retrospect,
Mary Jane speculated that the court decision on Keeney’s behalf
was a blessing and a curse of grand proportions: ‘‘A consequence of this
victory, one of the most sweeping ever won in an academic freedom case,
was that my husband and I became marked people. We gained many
new friends as a result of the fight, and also became known as people
who would not compromise an issue.’’96 She died in 1969 at the age of
seventy-one.
Notes
Most of the materials cited are from the following three sources: Philip Keeney
Personnel File, K. Ross Toole Archives, University of Montana, Missoula; referenced
in the endnotes as [Montana]. Philip Olin Keeney Papers (BANC MSS
71/157p), The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; referenced in
the endnotes as [Bancroft]. Montana State University–Philip Keeney File, archives
of the American Association of University Professors; referenced in the
endnotes as [AAUP].
1. The economic status of academe in the early 1930s is well described in
Malcolm M. Willey, Depression, Recovery, and Higher Education (New York: McGraw-
Hill, 1937).
2. The former Montana State University in Missoula is now called the University
of Montana. The current-day Montana State University is located in Bozeman.
During the 1930s the ‘‘University of Montana’’ was the umbrella name for
all public institutions of higher learning in the state.
3. C. H. Clapp to Sydney B. Mitchell, 9 June 1931 [Montana]; Mitchell to
Clapp, 1 July 1931 [Montana].
4. Mitchell to Clapp, 1 July 1931 [Montana]; Theodore Norton to Clapp, 8
August 1931 [Montana]; F. L. D. Goodrich to Clapp, 10 August 1931 [Montana].
5. Mary Jane Keeney, ‘‘The Making of a Radical,’’ Black & White 1 (September
1939): 16.
6. U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation, ‘‘Mary Jane Keeney; Philip Olin
Keeney,’’ file no. 101–467, section 2.
7. This author filed an inquiry with the Los Angeles Country Superior Court
County Records Center in 1992. A routine search of its indices from 1921 to
1928 produced no records of this divorce.
8. In May 1995 I interviewed Melba Phillips and Anne Florant, with whom
Mary Jane lived from 1962 until her death in 1969. Both women were unaware
that Philip, whom they also knew, was her second husband.
187
9. Mary Jane Keeney, ‘‘Biography of Mary Jane Keeney,’’ (typescript,
[1942?]), 3 [Bancroft, Box 2].
10. Keeney, ‘‘Making of a Radical,’’ 18.
11. Nathan Glazer, The Social Basis of American Communism (New York: Harcourt,
Brace & World, 1961), 141.
12. Ibid., 225.
13. [Mary Jane Keeney], ‘‘Interview with Civil Service Investigators, 810 18th
St., N.W., Friday, 10 September 1943, 1:00–4:30 P.M.,’’ 2. This is not an official
transcript, but rather Mary Jane’s dramatization of the interview based on her
memory [Bancroft, Box 2].
14. Ibid., 3.
15. ‘‘Report of the Committee Inquiry Concerning Charges of Violation of
Academic Freedom Involving the Dismissal of the President and Three Members
of the Faculty at the University of Montana,’’ Bulletin of the American Association
of University Professors 3 (May 1917): [3]–25.; ‘‘Report on the University of Montana,’’
Bulletin of the American Association of University Professors 10 (March 1924):
[50]–58.
16. Willey, Depression, Recovery, and Higher Education, 23.
17. George Simmons to Carl Moore, 17 April 1936 [Montana].
18. H. H. Swain to Philip O. Keeney, 10 December 1935 [Bancroft,
Scrapbook].
19. Keeney to Montana State Board of Education, 20 September 1935 [Bancroft,
Scrapbook].
20. Stephenson Smith, ‘‘To the Members of the Montana State Board of Education’’
[Bancroft, Scrapbook].
21. Ibid.
22. In the opinion of legal scholar William W. Van Alstyne, the case that
significantly broadened the right of teachers in public institutions to openly differ
with their employers was Pickering v. Board of Education of Township High School,
399 U.S. 563 (1968). The U.S. Supreme Court found on behalf of a high school
teacher who was fired after the local newspaper published his letter to the editor
criticizing the local school board for its method of raising revenues. William W.
Van Alstyne, ‘‘Academic Freedom and the First Amendment,’’ Law and Contemporary
Problems 53 (Summer 1990): 94.
23. Harry Clements and Charles McKinley, ‘‘Draft of a Report on the University
of Montana Tenure Inquiry,’’ 24 [AAUP].
24. Simmons, George Finlay, Who Was Who in America, vol. 3 (Chicago: A. N.
Marquis, 1960), 787.
25. State of Montana ex rel Philip O. Keeney v. Roy Ayers, et al. (1st Cir, 1938).
Reprinted in Transcript of the Record on Appeal, 69, W. S. Davidson, et al. v.
State of Montana ex rel Philip O. Keeney. From a facsimile copy in the Philip Olin
Keeney Papers at the Bancroft Library. Hereafter cited as ‘‘Record on Appeal.’’
26. Clements and McKinley, ‘‘Draft of a Report,’’ 61.
27. Ibid., 62.
28. Swain to Keeney, 10 December 1935 [Bancroft, Scrapbook].
29. S. Stephenson Smith to Simmons, 20 December 1935 [Bancroft,
Scrapbook].
30. Simmons to Smith, 22 February 1936 [Bancroft, Scrapbook].
31. S. Stephenson Smith, ‘‘An Open Letter to Members of the Montana State
Board of Higher Education’’ [Bancroft, Scrapbook].
32. Simmons to Smith, 22 February 1936 [Bancroft, Scrapbook].
188 L&C/Montana Tenure Dispute
33. James R. Steele, ‘‘Hire Learning in Montana,’’ Pacific Weekly (16 March
1936): 131–132.
34. ‘‘ ‘J. Ryan’ of ‘Progressive League’ not Graduate,’’ Montana Kaimin (10 April
1936): 1:5; 4:5.
35. ‘‘Statement of Philip O. Keeney,’’ I, 8 [Bancroft, Box 1].
36. Simmons to Keeney, 8 July 1936 [Montana].
37. Clements and McKinley, ‘‘Draft of a Report,’’ 3.
38. Simmons to Keeney, 8 July 1936 [Montana].
39. Resolution of the Montana Board of Education, 14 April 1936; this quotation
is taken from an undated, handwritten copy of the resolution in the Montana
archives; in a letter that Simmons wrote to Keeney two days later he refers
to the resolution and informs Keeney that it was passed at the board’s 14 April
meeting (Simmons to Keeney, 16 April 1936) [Montana].
40. Ibid.
41. ‘‘Statement of Philip O. Keeney,’’ I, 8; Merriam also provides a description
of the Keeney case in a chapter of his history of the university, The University of
Montana: a History (Missoula: University of Montana Press, 1970).
42. Herbert R. Ranson to Keeney, 14 January 1937 [Bancroft, Scrapbook].
43. Keeney to Ranson, 16 January 1937 [Bancroft, Scrapbook].
44. ‘‘Statement of Philip O. Keeney,’’ I, 10.
45. Simmons to Keeney, 6 April 1937 [Montana].
46. Superintendent of Education Ruth Reardon and State Attorney General
Harrison Freebourne voted against firing Keeney.
47. Clements and McKinley, ‘‘Draft of a Report,’’ 4.
48. ‘‘Dr. Simmons is Given Contract for 3 years,’’ Daily Missoulian, 14 April
1937, 1:5; 5:1.
49. Jerry O’Connell to Simmons, 3 May 1937 [Bancroft, Scrapbook].
50. Evelyn Geller, Forbidden Books in American Public Libraries, 1876–1939: A Study
in Cultural Change (Westport: Greenwood Press, 1984), [xv].
51. ‘‘The Library’s Bill of Rights,’’ Bulletin of the American Library Association 33
(15 October 1939): 60–61.
52. Carl Milam to Keeney, 13 May 1937 [Bancroft, Box 2].
53. Ibid.
54. Paul North Rice to Keeney, 7 June 1937 [Bancroft, Box 2].
55. Ibid.
56. Simmons to R. E. Himstead, 17 May 1937 [Montana].
57. Milton Ferguson, ‘‘A Case for Careful Investigation,’’ Library Journal 62 (15
June 1937): 512.
58. Ibid.
59. Keeney to Milton Ferguson, 25 June 1937 [Bancroft, Box 2].
60. Ibid.
61. Ferguson to Keeney, 21 July 1937 [Bancroft, Box 2].
62. Bertine E. Weston to Keeney, 22 September 1937 [Bancroft, Box 2].
63. Rice to Keeney, 13 July 1937 [Bancroft, Box 2].
64. Rice to Simmons, 28 June 1937; Rice to Swain, 13 July 1937 [Bancroft,
Box 2].
65. Geller, Forbidden Books, 171.
66. A historical summary of the ALA’s position on intellectual freedom can be
found in Louise Robbins, Toward Ideology and Autonomy: The American Library Association’s
Response to Threats to Intellectual Freedom, 1939–1969 (Ph.D. dissertation,
Texas Women’s University, 1991).
189
67. Milton J. Ferguson, ‘‘The Library Crosses the Bridge,’’ Library Journal 63
(July 1938): 425.
68. Freebourne’s opinion.
69. Clements and McKinley, ‘‘Draft of a Report, ‘‘ 88.
70. ‘‘AAUP Principles,’’ in American Association of University Professors, Policy
Documents and Reports (Washington, D.C.: American Association of University
Professors, 1977).
71. Ibid.
72. Walter P. Metzger, ‘‘The 1940 Statement of Principles on Academic Freedom,’’
Law and Contemporary Problems 53 (Summer 1990): 4. The principles have
been updated with supplements and the elimination of gender specific language
but remain essentially as they were in 1940.
73. Willey, Depression, Recovery, and Higher Education, 80.
74. Ibid.
75. Clements and McKinley, ‘‘Draft of a Report,’’ 8.
76. Ibid.
77. Ibid., 10.
78. Ibid., 22.
79. ‘‘Record on Appeal,’’ 15.
80. Keeney to Ralph Himstead, 24 August 1937 [Bancroft, Scrapbook].
81. Charles W. Hope to Simmons, 10 August 1937 [Montana].
82. Such a committee existed when Keeney was informed that his contract
would not be renewed, and within twenty-four hours he had appealed to its members
to take on his case. Their first impulse was to back away, probably out of
fear, but ostensibly because they did not have enough time to review the matter
before the board voted on contract renewals. The committee did in fact convene
shortly before the vote, but its deliberations were inconclusive. Clements and
McKinley, ‘‘Draft of Report,’’ 14.
83. Keeney, ‘‘Biography of Mary Jane Keeney.’’
84. W. S. Davidson, et al. v. State of Montana ex rel Philip O. Keeney, Appellant’s
Brief, 41. At the point of this appeal, Governor Ayers dropped out of the case
and its name was changed from State of Montana ex rel Philip O. Keeney v. Roy
Ayers, et al. to W. S. Davidson, et al. v. State of Montana ex rel Philip O. Keeney.
Davidson was another board member. Superintendent of Education Reardon
and Attorney General Freebourne never participated in the board’s case and
testified in court on Keeney’s behalf. From a facsimile copy in the Philip Olin
Keeney Papers at the Bancroft Library. Hereafter cited as ‘‘Appellant’s Brief.’’
85. ‘‘Appellant’s Brief,’’ 57.
86. W. S. Davidson, et al. v. State of Montana ex rel Philip O. Keeney, Respondent’s
Brief, 17. From a facsimile copy in the Philip Olin Keeney Papers at the Bancroft
Library. Hereafter cited as ‘‘Respondent’s Brief.’’
87. ‘‘Respondent’s Brief,’’ 27; the case was Indiana ex rel Anderson v. Brand, 303
U.S. 95 (1938).
88. Brief on Behalf of the American Civil Liberties Union, W. S. Davidson et
al. v. State of Montana ex rel Philip O. Keeney, 29–31. From a facsimile copy in the
Philip Olin Keeney Papers at the Bancroft Library.
89. State of Montana ex rel Philip O. Keeney v. Roy Ayers et al., 92 P2d 306 (1939).
When the case was decided in the state supreme court, it was cited under its
original name.
90. Colleges and Universities, Construction and Effect of Tenure Provisions of Contract
or Statutes Governing Employment of College or University Faculty Members, 66
ALR3d 1018 (1975).
190 L&C/Montana Tenure Dispute
91. As of January 1994, Shepherd’s Citations lists fifteen cases citing Keeney’s
case, but not all were related to teaching. For example, a Montana state highway
commissioner successfully used the case to argue for reinstatement after he was
fired without due process. The Keeney case was last cited in 1978.
92. Van Alstyne, ‘‘Academic Freedom,’’ 107.
93. A detailed description of the organization may be found in this author’s
article, ‘‘The Progressive Librarians Council and its Founders,’’ Progressive Librarian
2 (Winter 1990–1991): 23–29, and in Joe Kraus, ‘‘The Progressive Librarians
Council,’’ Library Journal 97 (July 1972): 2351–2354.
94. ‘‘Testimony of Philip O. Keeney and Mary Jane Keeney and Statement
Regarding Their Background,’’ Hearings before the Committee on Un-American
Activities, House of Representatives; Eighty-first Congress, First Session, 24, 25
May; 9 June 1949 (Washington: Government Printing Office, 1949).
95. ‘‘Simmons, George Finlay,’’ Who Was Who in America, vol. 3, 787.
96. Mary Jane Keeney, ‘‘The Political Persecution of Philip O. and Mary Jane
Keeney’’ [Bancroft, Box 2].
Additional References
‘‘Academic Freedom and Tenure: Montana State University.’’ Bulletin of the American
Association of University Professors 24 (April 1938): 321–348. The final report
of the AAUP investigation conducted by Charles McKinley and Harry
Clements.
The Keeney Case: Big Business, Higher Education, and Organized Labor. Chicago: American
Federation of Teachers, 1939.
Interview with Melba Phillips and Ann Florent, May 18, 1995. New York City