AMERICA:WHEN WENDY Gonaver was appointed as a lecturer in American and women's studies at California State University, Fullerton last August, she was looking forward to teaching classes on constitutional rights and the era of McCarthyism. A few days before her first lecture, however, she was fired because of a state law passed in 1952 at the height of the anti-communist scare in the United States, writes Denis Staunton.
Like all US citizens who are public employees in California, Gonaver was asked to sign a loyalty oath, pledging to defend the federal and state constitutions.
"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," the oath says.
As a Quaker and a pacifist, Gonaver feared that the oath could require her to take up arms and as a constitutional expert, she believed it breached her First Amendment right to freedom of speech.
"As I was sorting through all this, I was listening to reports about extraordinary renditions and eliminating habeas corpus and whether torture was a fine thing for us to engage in. I am opposed to war and have never seen one in my lifetime I could support," she said in an interview with The Progressive this week.
She especially resented the assertion in the oath that she was signing it freely and without any mental reservation.
"It's not enough that you're going to defend the Constitution, but you can't have an opinion about it that's negative. That's what sealed it for me - that I'd have to perjure myself to take the job," she said.
Gonaver asked if she could attach an addendum, making clear her commitment to non-violence and her conviction that the oath infringed on her constitutional rights, but she was told that such an addition would be illegal.
A few months earlier, Cal State had fired a mathematics instructor, also a Quaker, who had inserted the word "non-violently" into the oath before signing it. The maths teacher was reinstated after a media furore but other Quakers and Jehovah's Witnesses who have fallen foul of the law elsewhere in California have been less fortunate.
In 2001, Cal State, Dominguez 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.
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.
Some universities and school districts allow employees to add clarifying statements to the oath but the state's official position is that the oath must be signed without any additions or qualifications. People for the American Way, a liberal advocacy group that campaigns to defend the separation of church and state, has taken up Gonaver's case, calling on the university to reinstate her and to adopt a policy that respects religious freedom.
"She is willing to sign the oath as long as she can exercise her free-speech rights and note that her views as a Quaker would prevent her from taking up arms. We would like to avoid filing a lawsuit, but we are certainly prepared to do so if we need to," Kathryn Kolbert, the group's president, told the Los Angeles Times.
Gonaver has not worked since she was fired from Cal State but she says she has no interest in seeking damages from the university.
"Public universities are kind of strapped for cash," she said.
"I'm not interested in making money off of them by suing. I'm interested in getting my job back and an apology and an admission that what they did is wrong."
