Cal State: the loyalty oath

In this morning’s LA Times: Teacher fired for refusing to sign loyalty oath:

.....When Wendy Gonaver was offered a job teaching American studies at Cal State Fullerton this academic year, she was pleased to be headed back to the classroom to talk about one of her favorite themes: protecting constitutional freedoms.
.....But the day before class was scheduled to begin, her appointment as a lecturer abruptly ended over just the kind of issue that might have figured in her course. She lost the job because she did not sign a loyalty oath swearing to "defend" the U.S. and California constitutions "against all enemies, foreign and domestic."
.....The loyalty oath was added to the state Constitution by voters in 1952 to root out communists in public jobs. Now, 16 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, its main effect is to weed out religious believers, particularly Quakers and Jehovah's Witnesses.
.....As a Quaker from Pennsylvania and a lifelong pacifist, Gonaver objected to the California oath as an infringement of her rights of free speech and religious freedom. She offered to sign the pledge if she could attach a brief statement expressing her views, a practice allowed by other state institutions. But Cal State Fullerton rejected her statement and insisted that she sign the oath if she wanted the job.
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.....California State University officials say they were simply following the law and did not discriminate against Gonaver because all employees are required to sign the oath. Clara Potes-Fellow, a Cal State spokeswoman, said the university does not permit employees to submit personal statements with the oath.
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.....In February, another Cal State instructor, Quaker math teacher Marianne Kearney-Brown, was fired because she inserted the word "nonviolently" when she signed the oath. She was quickly rehired after her case attracted media attention.
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.....UC Berkeley was the first to impose a tough anti-communist loyalty oath in 1949 and fired 31 professors who refused to sign.
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.....Now, the University of California advises new employees who balk at signing the pledge that they can submit an addendum, as long as it does not negate the oath.
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.....The California State University system takes a firmer approach.
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.....The 23-campus Cal State system has fired instructors over the oath at least twice before.
.....In 2001, Cal StateDominguez Hills dismissed geography lecturer Alejandro Alonso after he refused to sign. He said at the time that he identified with the Jehovah's Witnesses and that swearing an oath to anyone but God violated his religious beliefs.
.....When his request for a religious exemption was denied, he proposed signing the oath and attaching a personal statement. That also was denied. Alonso, who went on to teach at USC, has become an expert on Los Angeles gangs and runs the website www.streetgangs.com.
.....In 1995, Methodist minister Bud Tillinghast was teaching a course on comparative religion at Humboldt State University, when he was pulled out of class by campus police and fired because he had not signed the oath.
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.....He filed suit against Cal State for reinstatement arguing that the oath violated the 1993 federal Religious Freedom Restoration Act. But after a court found that law unconstitutional, his suit was thrown out.
.....In all, Tillinghast said, he went up against the loyalty oath three times. Before being fired by Humboldt, he taught a religion class at a community college for nearly a decade. For that job, the school allowed him to sign an alternate oath.
.....Last year, he was named to the Humbolt County Human Rights Commission. A potential problem was averted when officials decided he didn't need to sign the oath.
.....Efforts to remove the oath from the state Constitution have been unsuccessful, although the matter came under scrutiny in 1998 when a congressional subcommittee held a hearing on religious freedom.
.....Among those who testified was Zari Wigfall, a Jehovah's Witness who said she twice lost jobs at Sacramento City College in 1994 because of the oath, first as a student tour guide and later as a theater house manager for a children's play.
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.....She is now a dancer, choreographer and teacher in Southern California.
.....For Gonaver, the oath came up unexpectedly.
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.....After researching the issue and learning that UC allowed its employees to provide personal statements, she submitted her own six-sentence declaration to Fullerton.
.....In her statement, she wrote that the oath violates the 1st Amendment and discriminates against religious pacifists, such as Quakers and Buddhists. She called the pledge an "instrument of intimidation." And she wrote that employees who sign it "while harboring legitimate religious and political objections" could be exposed to a charge of perjury.
.....Margaret Atwell, the Fullerton school's associate vice president for academic affairs, replied in an e-mail that Gonaver was not allowed to submit any statement, no matter what the practice at UC. Gonaver would have to sign the oath or lose the job, Atwell said.
.....Gonaver refused.
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.....The attorney general's statement that Kearney-Brown was allowed to attach her oath did not violate Cal State's policy because it was not an addendum, Potes-Fellow said. "We think the circumstances are different in both cases," she said….