Loyalty oaths live.

• Author: Rothschild, Matthew
• Position: McCarthyism Watch

Wendy Gonaver as hired by Cal State Fullerton last fall to teach American Studies and Women's Studies. As part of her American Studies course, she had planned to teach a section on McCarthyism. But she wasn't allowed to because she refused to sign the loyalty oath that the State of California still insists that its employees sign.

When Gonaver was hired, she says, she wasn't even told there was a loyalty oath.

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She went to the orientation for adjunct faculty on Friday, August 17. Classes were to begin the following Tuesday. She had already prepared her curriculum for Intro to American Studies. "One of the requirements is that you cover constitutional issues," Gonaver says, so she was looking forward to going over the McCarthyism period with her students.

But at the orientation, she says, everyone was told, "Here's the loyalty oath. You've got to sign it."

This is the text of the oath: "I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter."

As a Quaker and a Buddhist and a pacifist, Gonaver says, she could not sign the oath without registering her views.

The last part of the oath, about signing it "freely, without any mental reservation," really rankled her.

"It's not enough that you're going to defend the Constitution, but you can't have an opinion about [the oath] that's negative," she says. "That's what sealed it for me--that I'd have to perjure myself to take the job."

So she objected to it on the spot.

"I raised my hand and asked what kind of exceptions there are for religious minorities," she says. She was told there were none.

"I blurted out, 'I can't sign it,'" she recalls.

Gonaver says she did a little research on the Internet. She discovered that some branches of the...