Biography
Lloyd Barenblatt was a psychology instructor at Vassar College who in June 1954 was subpoenaed by the House Un-American Activities Committee, sitting in Albany, to answer questions about Communist activity at the University of Michigan, where he had been a graduate student. He refused on First Amendment grounds, citing the principles laid down by the Hollywood Ten. He was cited for contempt of Congress, convicted in federal court in Washington, and after exhausting appeals lost 5–4 at the Supreme Court in Barenblatt v. United States, 360 U.S. 109 (1959). Justice Hugo Black wrote a sweeping dissent — joined by Chief Justice Warren and Justices Douglas and Brennan — accusing the majority of approving naked political punishment of dissenting professors. Barenblatt served six months at the Federal Correctional Institution at Lewisburg, Pennsylvania in 1961, the same year Wilkinson and Braden served their parallel HUAC contempt sentences. Vassar fired him; he never taught again.
