Politics
Davis came from a radical family and has identified himself as a socialist and former member of the Communist Party of America.
Davis—along with two other professors, Mark Nickerson and Clement Markert—refused to cooperate with the House Unamerican Activities Committee and was subsequently dismissed from the University of Michigan. Davis was then sentenced to a six-month prison term where he was able to do some research. A paper from this era has the following acknowledgement:
"Research supported in part by the Federal Prison System. Opinions expressed in this paper are the author's and are not necessarily those of the Bureau of Prisons."
The Federal government released Davis from prison in 1960. After his release, Davis moved to Canada, where he currently resides.
In 1991, the University of Michigan Senate initiated the annual Davis, Markert, Nickerson Lecture on Academic and Intellectual Freedom. Recent speakers have included: Cass Sunstein (2008), Nadine Strossen (2007), Bill Keller (2006), Floyd Abrams (2005), and Noam Chomsky (2004).
Read more about this topic: Chandler Davis
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“All you can be sure about in a political-minded writer is that if his work should last you will have to skip the politics when you read it. Many of the so-called politically enlisted writers change their politics frequently.... Perhaps it can be respected as a form of the pursuit of happiness.”
—Ernest Hemingway (1899–1961)
“The rage for road building is beneficent for America, where vast distance is so main a consideration in our domestic politics and trade, inasmuch as the great political promise of the invention is to hold the Union staunch, whose days already seem numbered by the mere inconvenience of transporting representatives, judges and officers across such tedious distances of land and water.”
—Ralph Waldo Emerson (1803–1882)
“I am in politics because of the conflict between good and evil, and I believe that in the end good will triumph.”
—Margaret Thatcher (b. 1925)