In November 1954, Albert Einstein wrote a letter to a magazine in which he declared that, were he a young man again, he would not try to become a scientist: “I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.”

Around the United States, plumbers responded. The famous physicist was offered membership in the Chicago plumbers union, and Stanley Murray, a New York plumber, wrote to him: “Since my ambition has always been to be a scholar and yours seems to be a plumber, I suggest that as a team we would be tremendously successful. We can then be possessed by both knowledge and independence. I am ready to change the name of my firm to read: Einstein and Stanley Plumbing Co.”

Einstein was only half-joking, however, when he issued his statement. The physicist sincerely considered that the political climate in the country was becoming increasingly hostile to scientists and teachers. Our own troubled times have many aspects in common with the dreadful period of the McCarthy investigations: the attacks on the freedom of academics, teachers, and the press, the silencing and censorship of government workers, the idea that the United States is threatened by certain creeds. It is worth describing the dire sequence of past events, and learning from Einstein’s clairvoyant and courageous response to them, in order to best address the present situation.

A campaign of untruth
On February 9, 1950, Senator Joseph McCarthy from Wisconsin announced that he had a list of 205 workers of the State Department who were members of the Communist Party. The next day, a journalist asked to see the list. But McCarthy could not find it; his explanation was that he had left it in another suit. The Senate committee that was created to investigate these claims concluded a few months later that McCarthy’s accusations represented “perhaps the most nefarious campaign of half-truths and untruth in the history of this republic.” Historians are now sure there never was such a list.

Nevertheless, at the time, mainstream Republicans ignored the findings of the Senate committee. They saw McCarthy’s tactics as something that would help them take control of the White House, after a sixteen-year absence. They invited him to meetings where he ranted about the “plot” at the highest levels of government. McCarthy’s staff also circulated a doctored photograph, purportedly showing the leader of the Senate committee in close conversation with leaders of the Communist Party...

Einstein’s response to a political climate increasingly hostile to scientists and teachers.