City College Archives and Special Collections
The Rapp-Coudert Committee Files (Record ID 00210)
The Rapp-Coudert Committee, also called the Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate the Educational System of the State of New York (1940-1942), was a committee of the New York State Legislature charged with investigating the influence of communism in the New York state public education system. Its investigations largely focused on the four municipal colleges (City College, Hunter College, Brooklyn College, and Queens College) and the committee subpoenaed and questioned over 500 witnesses in closed hearings. The committee only ever indicted a single person, English lecturer Morris Schappes, but its actions led to the dismissal, non-renewal of contract, or resignation of hundreds of faculty, administrators, and staff members from all four colleges.[1] The committee’s final report asserted that while committee members did not identify any evidence of a widespread conspiracy involving New York schools, they did discover that the Communist party had intentionally infiltrated the education system.[2]
While the majority of the Rapp-Coudert Committee’s documents are held at the New York State Archives, this CCNY collection contains materials relating specifically to CCNY and the local response to investigations into its own faculty and staff. This includes official documents such as copies of Rapp-Coudert testimony, the committee’s reports, statements made by CCNY administration, and official correspondence, as well as ephemera such as flyers and pamphlets created by student and faculty groups, union bulletins, administrative memos, and newspaper clippings. This collection also contains materials related to the Board of Trustees’ 1981 Board Resolution expressing “regret for the injustice”.
Office of the President
The Office of the President collection contains the papers of City College presidents, organized by president in chronological order. Materials in this collection include correspondence, press releases, news clippings, and administrative material regarding the work of a College President. Of note are presidents Frederick B. Robinson (1927-1939) and Harry Nobel Wright (1941-1952), both of whom acted to suppress anti-fascist, anti-war, and other leftist movements on campus throughout their tenures.
President Robinson accepted the position in 1927, during the rise of leftist student and faculty groups, including the Communist Party Unit of CCNY, the Teachers Union, the Young Peoples Socialist League, and the American Student Union. He responded aggressively to this activism on campus and convened hundreds of student disciplinary hearings to examine students’ politics, beliefs, protest actions, and social associations, resulting in many expulsions and suspensions.[3]
President Wright was Acting President of CCNY beginning in 1941. He was promoted to President in 1942 and served in this role until 1953. Wright supported the Rapp-Coudert investigations in both ideology and action, providing the committee with a list of potential CCNY informers. He also suspended, dismissed, fired, or pressured into resignation CCNY employees who testified to the Rapp-Coudert Committee under suspicion of communist involvement, including those who denied the accusations.[4]
CCNY Campus Newspapers and Student Publications
Students at CCNY maintained a number of publications throughout the 1930s-1950s which may touch on Red Scare-related happenings on campus. Founded in 1907, CCNY’s The Campus is the oldest student publication in CUNY. As of December 2025, CCNY archivists are working to make editions from 1907 through 2013 available via JSTOR. The CCNY Cohen Library also has a complete run of the National Student League publication, Student Review, in their periodicals. The National Student League was formed initially by student activists at CCNY, later expanding to other campuses and becoming a nationwide militant, Communist-led coalition of radical students[5]. A wide variety of other publications, including magazines, literary and arts journals, satirical newspapers, and individual or special editions are also available for in-person research.
College Teachers Union of New York City
This collection contains documents relating to the New York City Teachers Union and its subsidiary, the College Teachers Union. The New York City Teachers Union (TU) was founded in 1916, and by 1940 had over 6,000 members. It was incorporated as Local 5 of the American Federation of Teachers (AFT). For much of its existence it was the largest teachers’ organization in the city, but its leaders and membership faced frequent accusations of communist sympathies. In 1935, infighting about radical activist tactics split the union and its founders separated to create the Teachers Guild (TG), which actively attempted to discredit the TU on the basis of its communist politics. Amidst these attacks, the TU continued to expand, and by 1937 the group had grown enough to form a College Teachers Union unit (aka Local 537 of the AFT). Despite this growth, they continued to face red-baiting hostility; after the Rapp-Coudert investigations, the TU and the College Teachers Union were expelled from the AFT.[6]
The documents in this collection provide the TU’s perspective on these events, including an “Open Letter to the Coudert Committee”, as well as statements, press releases, bulletins, and flyers advertising demonstrations.
American Association of University Professors (AAUP), CCNY Chapter
The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) was formed in NYC in 1915 as a response to several attempts to dismiss academic faculty because of their controversial writings. As a result, the AAUP positioned itself as a defender of academic freedom and tenure throughout the U.S. and focused on large-scale policies and lobbying.[7] The CCNY chapter paid close attention to the AAUP’s regional and national responses to Rapp-Coudert and other threats to academic freedom. This collection includes official AAUP correspondence, reports, and statements, as well as documentation of events specific to CCNY and special meetings held by the chapter.
Morris Schappes Collection
Morris Schappes was among the 40 professors fired from CCNY as a result of the Rapp-Coudert Committee trials. Schappes was the only professor arrested in conjunction with the Rapp-Coudert Committee’s investigation and was eventually convicted of perjury for lying in his sworn testimony to the committee. Most of Morris Schappes’ papers are split between New York University’s Tamiment Library and the Center for Jewish History (see External Resources below), but CCNY maintains a small collection which includes papers pertaining to his firing, subsequent investigation and trial.
Leftist Organizing at CCNY, 1932-1946
This collection of flyers, newsletters and news articles was circulated at The City College of New York (CCNY) primarily between 1934 and 1936, with some items created and circulated as late as 1941. Most were created by leftist campus groups, including the Communist Party Unit of City College, the Marxist Cultural Society, and local chapters of the Young Peoples Socialist League, the Young Communist League, and the American Student Union. Some material created by the Hunter College Young Communist League can also be found here. Topics broadly span the most popular leftist fronts of the time, but anti-war, anti-fascist, labor organizing, and academic freedom movements are most well-represented.
A selection of this collection is hosted on JSTOR. Other material not included on JSTOR can be seen by appointment at CCNY.
CCNY Teacher and Worker
Teacher and Worker (later Teacher Worker) was a monthly publication by faculty and staff who were members of the Communist Party Unit of City College. Members of the Communist Party Unit of City College were also involved in the CCNY Instructional Staff Association, Teachers Union, and campus Anti-Fascist Association. Teacher and Worker published its first issue in March 1935 following the dismissals of several professors in the History Department, advocating for a united struggle for job security and better working conditions. Throughout its run, the publication featured anonymous articles that discussed various campus, national, and international issues related to labor organizing, anti-war and anti-fascist movements, anti-Black racism and antisemitism at CCNY and beyond, Communist Party politics, and anti-Communist persecution. Teacher and Worker closely followed the investigations of CCNY faculty. Digitized issues of Teacher and Worker can be found on JSTOR as part of the Leftist Organizing at CCNY collection.
The Struggle for Free Speech at CCNY
“The Struggle for Free Speech at CCNY, 1931-42” is an online exhibition curated by former CCNY Associate Professor Carol Smith. This exhibition includes images from the CCNY archives, as well as materials from outside collections. The website includes a chronology of anti-war and anti-fascist protest at CCNY, the Rapp-Coudert proceedings, and the aftermath.
Contact Information
Advance appointments are required to view materials at these archives. Once you’ve determined which materials you’d like to view, please use the following contact information to make an appointment prior to visiting the archives.
Website: https://library.ccny.cuny.edu/archives/
Email: archives@ccny.cuny.edu
Phone: (212) 650-7609
Location: Morris Raphael Cohen Library, Room 5/301
160 Convent Ave, North Academic Center (NAC), New York, NY 10031
Notes
Heins, M. (2016). Priests of our democracy: The Supreme Court, academic freedom, and the anti-Communist purge. New York University Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814790519.001.0001↑
N.Y. Legis. Joint Legislative Committee to Investigate Procedures and Methods of Allocating State Moneys for Public School Purposes and Subversive Activities. Report of the subcommittee relative to the public educational system of the city of New York, 1942. Accessed 22 September 2025 via https://hdl.handle.net/2027/mdp.39015069255142↑
Smith, C. (2015) The Struggle for Free Speech at CCNY, CUNY Digital History Archive. https://virtualny.ashp.cuny.edu/gutter/panels/panel1.html↑
Smith, C. (2015) The Struggle for Free Speech at CCNY, CUNY Digital History Archive. https://virtualny.ashp.cuny.edu/gutter/panels/panel1.html↑
The National Student League, “National Student League Platform,” CUNY Digital History Archive, accessed November 20, 2025, https://cdha.cuny.edu/items/show/3782. ↑
Heins, M. (2016). Priests of our democracy: The Supreme Court, academic freedom, and the anti-Communist purge. New York University Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814790519.001.0001↑
Heins, M. (2016). Priests of our democracy: The Supreme Court, academic freedom, and the anti-Communist purge. New York University Press. https://doi.org/10.18574/nyu/9780814790519.001.0001↑