Category: Analysis

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Nelson Phillips, Distinguished Professor of Technology Management, University of California, Santa Barbara

As artificial intelligence tools like ChatGPT become an increasingly popular avenue for people seeking personal therapy and emotional support, the dangers that this can present – especially for young people – have made plenty of headlines. What hasn’t received as much attention is employers using generative AI to assess workers’ psychological well-being and provide emotional support in the workplace.

Since the pandemic-induced global shift to remote work, industries ranging from health care to human resources and customer service have seen a spike in employers using AI-powered systems designed to analyze the emotional state of employees, identify emotionally distressed individuals, and provide them with emotional support.

This new frontier is a large step beyond using general chat tools or individual therapy apps for psychological support. As researchers studying how AI affects emotions and relationships in the workplace, we are concerned with critical questions that this shift raises: What happens when your employer has access to your emotional data? Can AI really provide the kind of emotional support workers need? What happens if the AI malfunctions? And if something goes wrong, who’s responsible?

The workplace difference

Many companies have started by offering automated counseling programs that have many parallels with personal therapy apps, a practice that has shown some benefits. In preliminary studies, researchers found that in a doctor-patient-style virtual conversation setting, AI-generated responses actually make people feel more heard than human ones. A study comparing AI chatbots with human psychotherapists found the bots were “at least as empathic as therapist responses, and sometimes more so.”

This might seem surprising at first glance, but AI offers unwavering attention and consistently supportive responses. It doesn’t interrupt, doesn’t judge and doesn’t get frustrated when you repeat the same concerns. For some employees, especially those dealing with stigmatized issues like mental health or workplace conflicts, this consistency feels safer than human interaction.

But for others, it raises new concerns. A 2023 study found that workers were reluctant to participate in company-initiated mental health programs due to worries about confidentiality and stigma. Many feared that their disclosures could negatively affect their careers.

Other workplace AI systems go much deeper, analyzing employee communication as it happens – think emails, Slack conversations and Zoom calls. This analysis creates detailed records of employee emotional states, stress patterns and psychological vulnerabilities. All this data resides within corporate systems where privacy protections are typically unclear and often favor the interests of the employer.

Workplace Options, a global employee assistance provider, has partnered with Wellbeing.ai to deploy a platform that uses facial analytics to track emotional states across 62 emotion categories. It generates well-being scores that organizations can use to detect stress or morale issues. This approach effectively embeds AI into emotionally sensitive aspects of work, leaving an uncomfortably thin boundary between support and surveillance.

In this scenario, the same AI that helps employees feel heard and supported also generates unprecedented insight into workforce emotional dynamics. Organizations can now track which departments show signs of burnout, identify employees at risk of quitting and monitor emotional responses to organizational changes.

But this type of tool also transforms emotional data into management intelligence, presenting many companies with a genuine dilemma. While progressive organizations are establishing strict data governance – limiting access to anonymized patterns rather than individual conversations – others struggle with the temptation to use emotional insights for performance evaluation and personnel decisions.

Continuous surveillance carried out by some of these systems may help ensure that companies do not neglect a group or individual in distress, but it can also lead people to monitor their own actions to avoid calling attention to themselves. Research on workplace AI monitoring has shown how employees experience increased stress and modify their behavior when they know that management can review their interactions. The monitoring undermines the feeling of safety necessary for people to comfortably seek help. Another study found that these systems increased distress for employees due to the loss of privacy and concerns that consequences would arise if the system identified them as being stressed or burned out.

When artificial empathy meets real consequences

These findings are important because the stakes are arguably even higher in workplace settings than personal ones. AI systems lack the nuanced judgment necessary to distinguish between accepting someone as a person versus endorsing harmful behaviors. In organizational contexts, this means an AI might inadvertently validate unethical workplace practices or fail to recognize when human intervention is critical.

And that’s not the only way AI systems can get things wrong. A study found that emotion-tracking AI tools had a disproportionate impact on employees of color, trans and gender nonbinary people, and people living with mental illness. Interviewees expressed deep concern about how these tools might misread an employee’s mood, tone or verbal queues due to ethnic, gender and other kinds of bias that AI systems carry.

There’s also an authenticity problem. Research shows that when people know they’re talking to an AI system, they rate identical empathetic responses as less authentic than when they attribute them to humans. Yet some employees prefer AI precisely because they know it’s not human. The feeling that these tools protect your anonymity and freedom from social consequences is appealing for some – even if it may only be a feeling.

The technology also raises questions about what happens to human managers. If employees consistently prefer AI for emotional support, what does that reveal about organizational leadership? Some companies are using AI insights to train managers in emotional intelligence, turning the technology into a mirror that reflects where human skills fall short.

The path forward

The conversation about workplace AI emotional support isn’t just about technology – it’s about what kinds of companies people want to work for. As these systems become more prevalent, we believe it’s important to grapple with fundamental questions: Should employers prioritize authentic human connection over consistent availability? How can individual privacy be balanced with organizational insights? Can organizations harness AI’s empathetic capabilities while preserving the trust necessary for meaningful workplace relationships?

The most thoughtful implementations recognize that AI shouldn’t replace human empathy, but rather create conditions where it can flourish. When AI handles routine emotional labor – the 3 a.m. anxiety attacks, pre-meeting stress checks, processing difficult feedback – managers gain bandwidth for deeper, more authentic connections with their teams.

But this requires careful implementation. Companies that establish clear ethical boundaries, strong privacy protections and explicit policies about how emotional data gets used are more likely to avoid the pitfalls of these systems – as will those that recognize when human judgment and authentic presence remain irreplaceable.

The authors do not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and have disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. AI is providing emotional support for employees – but is it a valuable tool or privacy threat? – https://theconversation.com/ai-is-providing-emotional-support-for-employees-but-is-it-a-valuable-tool-or-privacy-threat-266570

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Ryan Travia, Associate Vice President for Student Success, Babson College

Many high school seniors across the country are in the throes of college applications – often a high-stakes, anxiety-ridden process.

But the stress doesn’t necessarily stop once students are admitted.

Emotional stress, mental health and tuition cost are the top three reasons that college students drop out, according to a 2023 Gallup poll of 14,032 students.

By most standards, there is a mental health crisis among college students. But the University of Michigan’s healthy minds survey, the country’s largest student mental health study to date, recently found that college students are reporting lower rates of depressive symptoms, anxiety and suicidal thoughts for the third year in a row.

Conducted in 2024 and 2025 and surveying more than 84,000 students across 135 American colleges and universities, the study finds that severe depression symptoms among college students dropped in the past two years to 18% – down from 23% who said they experienced severe depression in 2022. Students who have suicidal thoughts dropped from 15% in 2022 to 11% during 2024 and 2025.

I have worked in student affairs and college health for the past 25 years, leading substance abuse prevention and mental health promotion efforts, and overseeing a range of clinical services. Despite these recent optimistic findings, I’m still alarmed by the prevalence and acuity of students’ mental health concerns nationwide.

Taking a break

College students experience high levels of stress due to a confluence of factors, including academic pressures, financial concerns and complex social dynamics. Understanding the root causes of students’ stress is an important precursor for schools to come up with effective ways to help students manage their anxiety and succeed in school.

But even when schools offer extensive mental health support programs, students occasionally need to take a break to focus on their health and well-being.

Over the past 10 years, I have reviewed and approved medical withdrawals for 133 students at Babson College. From fall 2015 to early spring 2020, before the COVID-19 pandemic, an average of 12 students per year left on medical leave out of the nearly 4,000 students enrolled at the school.

The average number of students taking medical leave then increased by about two people a year from fall 2020 through 2025. Approximately 82% of these cases are mental health-related.

Roughly 70% of these students ultimately return to campus and eventually graduate. In general, very few students who take a leave of absence from school end up returning.

However, there are some schools that use proactive, nondisciplinary policies to support students taking a break to pursue more intensive treatment. These policies can provide clear treatment recommendations and instructions on what conditions students need to be met in order to return to school, resulting in a higher likelihood of the students enrolling once again.

Understanding well-being

Well-being is a word that is top of mind for many higher education leaders, yet colleges and universities do not have a single definition of what well-being means, though it is often a term schools use to talk about students’ mental health. Well-being generally encompasses acknowledging and being comfortable with your feelings, and being equipped to manage stress.

While there is movement toward embedding student mental health and well-being into the very fabric of an institution, many colleges and universities still rely on reaching students in more traditional ways – through health fairs and information tables in the student center, for example.

While these strategies certainly serve a purpose in helping to raise awareness of mental health resources, when used in isolation, they are unlikely to result in actual behavioral change among students.

Students of color, particularly Black and Latino students, are more likely than white students to temporarily withdraw from college.

One step institutions can take: Hire more faculty, staff and mental health counselors who are people of color and can better connect with minority students through shared lived experiences.

Well-being is central to students’ success

In 2007, an undergraduate student at Virginia Tech University shot and killed 32 people, and wounded 17 others, before he died by suicide.

Schools since then have adopted early alert systems – often referred to as care teams – to help identify students who are struggling, either academically, socially or emotionally. The idea is that schools can intervene and get students connected with campus resources such as academic advisers, student success coaches, accessibility services, financial aid and mental health support.

Ongoing training for faculty, staff and students on how to activate these systems of support and make referrals to a care team is critical to their success. The goal is to cast a wide net so students do not fall through the cracks and go unnoticed when they are not mentally well, which is what happened with the Virginia Tech shooter.

Dozens of campuses, including New York University, Indiana State University, the University of North Dakota, The Ohio State University and Harvard University, have also embraced mindfulness practices in recent years, offering breath work and other forms of meditation for their students as free services on campus.

Some campus police departments have also begun using therapy dogs to help support students’ mental health and bolster community engagement.

Other schools, like Stevens Institute of Technology and Princeton University, have stopped keeping labs and libraries open 24/7 as a way to encourage students to take a break and rest – though admittedly most institutions that have made these changes have done so as a result of budget cuts, and less so as a proactive, preventive measure.

Positioning students for success

I have long argued that well-being is central to academic, personal and professional success.

In recent years, I have also encouraged schools to position well-being as the key driver to student academic, personal and professional success.

Research has linked students’ well-being to them staying in school, and findings suggest that colleges can develop targeted mental health programs to improve retention rates. In other words, focusing on the health and well-being of students may, in fact, lead to better outcomes – emotionally, physically and academically.

Ryan Travia received funding from the American College Health Foundation for serving as lead author and researcher for a series of papers on framing and measuring well-being from 2019-2022.

– ref. College students are now slightly less likely to experience severe depression, research shows – but the mental health crisis is far from over – https://theconversation.com/college-students-are-now-slightly-less-likely-to-experience-severe-depression-research-shows-but-the-mental-health-crisis-is-far-from-over-267606

Source: The Conversation – USA (2) – By Nancy Forster-Holt, Clinical Associate Professor of Innovation and Entrepreneurship, University of Rhode Island

By now, Americans know the strange math of minting: Each penny costs about 4 cents to make. Chances are you have some in a jar, or scattered among pockets, purses and car ashtrays.

As small as it is, the penny punches above its weight culturally. If it ever disappeared, so too might the simple kindness of “take a penny, leave a penny,” alongside timeless classics like penny loafers and the tradition of tossing a penny in a fountain.

But the penny’s days are indeed numbered. The U.S. Mint pressed the last 1-cent coin on Nov. 12, 2025, following a directive from the White House. While pennies will remain legal tender, old ones will gradually be taken out of circulation.

The impact of this change will reach beyond coin jars. Its ripples will be felt as small, cash-reliant Main Street merchants face another test of adaptability in a system that increasingly favors scale, technology and plastic. It will also be felt by people who rely on cash – often people without bank accounts who have the least room to absorb even tiny shifts in price.

My interest comes from my former lives as the chief financial officer of a large credit union and as a small-business owner. Now, I bridge theory and practice as a professor – or “prac-ademic,” as I like to say – studying the challenges facing Main Street businesses.

When the penny goes away, some will win, some will lose – and for some, it’ll be a coin toss.

Heads, they win

The first and most obvious winner is the U.S. government, which will save tens of millions of dollars each year by no longer minting a coin that costs more to make than it’s worth. Ending production seems like an easy call for efficiency’s sake.

Banks and credit unions will likely benefit too. Pennies are disproportionately expensive to handle: Every bag of pennies gets counted, sorted, rolled, verified and shipped back to the Federal Reserve, generating labor and equipment costs that far exceed the coin’s value. Removing the smallest denomination strips out an entire layer of cost and friction from bank operations – savings that scale immediately across thousands of branches.

Another beneficiary, this one hiding in plain sight, is who transports the cash: the armored-carrier industry. For companies such as Loomis and Brink’s, pennies are heavy, low-value cargo, and a logistical money-loser. Removing penny pickups eliminates one of their most inefficient services, reducing fuel use, labor hours and truck wear.

Large retailers will likely also win. Size and scale make it easier to undertake preparations both big and small, such as reprogramming cash registers and stockpiling pennies to hedge against shortages. Larger companies also have the talent and bandwidth to figure out the true costs and benefits of accepting cash or noncash payments. If most of their transactions are already digital, they could be relatively indifferent to the end of the penny.

Large retailers also negotiate lower card processing rates, which are the fees merchants must pay to the card companies every time a customer uses a credit or debit card. These rates aren’t uniform: Large chains get discounted pricing based on sales volume, while small businesses face higher costs for identical transactions. It follows that any policy change leading to more people paying with plastic will disproportionately benefit larger retailers.

To be sure, some banks, credit unions and large retailers have expressed concern and surprise at the pace of the change and the lack of guidance from the federal government. But for most, the penny’s end is a minor operational footnote. Online-only businesses operate in this frictionless world as well – no coins, no counting, no issue.

Tails, they lose

For small, Main Street businesses, the penny’s disappearance highlights the structural disadvantages they already face – and I think it will force a reckoning about what types of payments benefit their bottom lines.

As pennies phase out, local businesses are likely to round cash transactions to the nearest 5 cents, resulting in what economists call a “rounding tax.” Rounding to the nearest nickel could cost businesses and consumers about $6 million annually, according to researchers with the Federal Reserve Bank of Richmond.

And it wouldn’t offer much relief if more shoppers turn to plastic and other noncash payments. That’s because most small merchants lack the negotiating power to lower their card-processing fees.

Card acceptance comes with a layered stack of costs for merchants: interchange fees, network assessments, processor markups, gateway fees, chargeback penalties, terminal rentals and more. Together, these average 2.5% to 3.5% per sale for many small businesses. Also, there are expenses related to adopting the latest, greatest payment methods, and then keeping them updated.

Consider a quick-service restaurant where a typical customer spends $14. If that customer pays with a credit card and the business pays an average processing fee of 2.2% plus 10 cents per transaction, each sale incurs about 41 cents in fees. Even low-cost debit cards include fixed per-transaction charges that disproportionately affect businesses when the per-sale average is small. When the average sale is $10 or less, it barely covers the cost to process it as a card transaction.

That said, handling cash also comes at a cost, and it’s not always easy to know what’s best for business. One analysis found that accepting cash costs 53 cents per $100 of sales, compared with $1.12 for accepting debit payments using a signature and 81 cents for PIN-based debit. Of course, businesses also should keep in mind that different customers will have different payment preferences.

And speaking of customers, those who are most likely to feel the pinch from the end of the penny are people who still rely on cash: older adults, lower-income households, people without credit cards or bank accounts – either unbanked or under-banked – and people who budget in cash because it provides firmer spending discipline.

A few cents added to a grocery total or a convenience store purchase may not matter to someone tapping a rewards credit card, but cash-dependent consumers experience those small increases directly, with no offsetting points, perks or end-of-month cash back. And yes, prices often end in 99 cents, which get rounded up, not down. So the burden falls disproportionately on those least equipped to absorb even small, cumulative increases.

For some, it’s a coin toss

Digital-first consumers may barely notice the penny’s disappearance. They tap phones, scan QR codes and use payment apps that will still settle to the exact amount.

While businesses haven’t received final guidance on how to handle payments in the post-penny era, one option is to price electronic transactions to the cent and round cash transactions to the nearest nickel. If that were widely adopted, digital payments alone would remain precise.

Consumers who use cashless payments may believe their choice doesn’t affect how they shop, but behavioral research says otherwise. Credit cards reduce the “pain of paying,” leading people to spend more – often 10% to 20% more than with cash. Credit card rewards programs further incentivize card use. In one last nod to the cost of noncash payments, those rewards are funded by higher merchant fees that ultimately translate into higher retail prices.

Killing the penny makes economic sense for the government and some businesses, yet it also highlights a deeper truth: Efficiency tends to reward the already efficient. For many, however, even when the change is small, every cent still counts.

Nancy Forster-Holt does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. Who wins and who loses as the US retires the penny – https://theconversation.com/who-wins-and-who-loses-as-the-us-retires-the-penny-267380

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Kate Price, Associate Research Scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women, Wellesley College

Congress on Nov. 18, 2025, passed legislation that calls on the Justice Department to release records related to Jeffrey Epstein, the late convicted sex offender. Those records on the federal investigation of Epstein and his accomplice, Ghislaine Maxwell, have brought renewed attention to sex trafficking. Alfonso Serrano, a politics editor at The Conversation, spoke with Kate Price, an associate research scientist at the Wellesley Centers for Women at Wellesley College, where she studies child sexual exploitation and child sex trafficking policy.

What is child sex trafficking and how does it differ from other kinds of trafficking?

It is a child being traded for sex via force, fraud or coercion. These are children who are under the age of 18. Often what happens, in terms of victim blaming, if a child is, say, 15, 16, 17, there’s this level of blame from perpetrators, the media, relatives, law enforcement, jurors: “She knew what she was doing.” I recently heard this with the Epstein files back in the news: “He wasn’t into like 8-year-olds. … There’s a difference between a 15-year-old and a 5-year-old.” That’s not true. Children cannot make decisions that adults can. Neuroscience shows that children’s brains are not developed until their mid 20s. Children do not have the same decision-making capacity. That very vulnerability is what is preyed upon by perpetrators.

Why do we not use terms like “child prostitution” anymore, and why does language matter?

In the late 1990s and early aughts, at the beginning of the anti-human trafficking movement, people did use the term child prostitution. In fact, I used it in a white paper that I did, and I’m a survivor. But once we really adopted and embraced the terminology of force, fraud and coercion of human trafficking, that gave us a new frame to think of the power dynamics that are involved in the commercial sexual exploitation of children. This phrasing captures the true essence of what is happening within child sex trafficking.

This is not a child somehow deciding that they’re going to go out and trade sex for money, heat, food, anything of value. This is a case of perpetrators, whether they are family members or nonfamily traffickers, who are preying on the vulnerability of children who have often been sexually abused prior to their commercial sexual exploitation. This prior abuse adds another layer of vulnerability.

How do Epstein’s actions fit into the paradigm of trafficking – is he a classic case or an unusual one?

Jeffrey Epstein is not unique. This is absolutely a classic case, for four primary reasons. Child sex trafficking perpetrators are primarily white men, with wealth and power. Epstein was, granted, among the uber rich and really powerful men. But power is relative to whatever context in which a child is being exploited. The most powerful person in a small town may not be a billionaire like Epstein, but they have disposable income and high socioeconomic status for the area, or they may hold a prominent position in government, church or a civic organization.

The Epstein case is also not unique in that victims are often dehumanized, by perpetrators and in the media. They are blamed, even though they are children who are developmentally incapable of making adult choices. There are transcripts of Maxwell calling the girls “trash.” These are seen as disposable children, not worthy of protections. And they have already been dehumanized within our culture prior to exploitation, whether it be through poverty, lack of educational or employment opportunities, or prior sexual violence. That makes them even more vulnerable to perpetrators such as Epstein and Maxwell, who are looking to prey upon those vulnerabilities.

Third, traffickers often insulate themselves from detection and trafficking charges by having others, such as women or girls, recruiting victims for them, which is exactly what Epstein did. Lastly, traffickers and buyers often plea down their trafficking charges. That results in low trafficking prosecution rates. They plea down from a charge like trafficking of a minor to assault, so this does not count toward trafficking prosecution rates. Epstein did exactly this in 2008 when he accepted prosecutor Alex Acosta’s nonprosecution agreement to plead guilty to two lesser Florida state-level prostitution charges rather than facing the multiple federal child sex trafficking charges for which Epstein was being investigated. This ability to use their wealth and power hides the truth of what is happening.

What systems allow sex trafficking to happen, and how can we change those systems?

Law enforcement often looks the other way. In the Epstein case, one of the victims had reached out to the FBI decades ago and nothing happened. It’s really been the persistence of the survivors, saying people really need to look at this.

Child sex trafficking is not a political issue. It’s one of the few bipartisan issues in our country that is so culturally divided. Yet Americans need to acknowledge that perpetrators comes from all political affiliations, they come from all races, socioeconomic status. As a culture, we really need to not blame victims and survivors. These are children who are being manipulated and violated. So recognizing the truth of power differences between perpetrators and victims is something that we as a culture very much need to do. By supporting victims, we can use our power – as relatives, jurors, constituents, elected officials – to hold traffickers and buyers to account. Victim-blaming creates a diversion that cements perpetrators’ ability to exploit and abuse children without fear of detection.

In terms of legislation, most states in the country still retain the right to criminalize sexually exploited minors, either through arrests or prosecution. These are laws that all states have considered since 2007, when New York was the first state to introduce a Safe Harbor law.

In Massachusetts, where I live, law enforcement retains the right to arrest or prosecute a minor for prostitution. That often doesn’t happen. But the reason law enforcement says it needs to have these laws is because it encourages children to get services. It’s a leverage point.

But oftentimes children do not trust law enforcement. And often for good reason. Some law enforcement are perpretrators. Other times, law enforcement tells sex-trafficked minors, “We’re doing this for your protection, we’re going to lock you up.” Both instances are deeply traumatizing and lead to mistrust of the police. That being said, so many extraordinary law enforcement agents are committed to supporting child sex trafficking victims and holding perpetrators to account.

Much of this retraumatization happens because local and state governments do not have the money for social services, trauma-informed, child sex trafficking-specific services, and housing opportunities for children to be able to heal. What we have is a robust criminal legal system. So, until we have a robust system that can support children who have been trafficked, sex trafficking is going to continue, in my experience.

Any last thoughts?

We need to acknowledge low prosecution rates of child sexual abuse cases, that 14% of all reported – just reported – child sexual abuse perpetrators are convicted or plead guilty. Similarly, in terms of adult rape charges, 1% of cases end in a conviction or guilty plea. So much of this lack of perpetrator accountability comes through this employment of plea deals and dehumanizing and retraumatizing victims during legal proceedings.

So we need to acknowledge when our criminal-legal system is not doing justice to victims whatsoever, and they’re allowing perpetrators to walk free. In the Epstein case, we’re focused on a few people, while hundreds of perpetrators continue to walk free. By employing these tactics, predators will continue to use the societal silence and misperceptions to their advantage. If it takes a village to raise a child, it also takes a village to sexually exploit a child.

Kate Price does not work for, consult, own shares in or receive funding from any company or organization that would benefit from this article, and has disclosed no relevant affiliations beyond their academic appointment.

– ref. ‘Jeffrey Epstein is not unique’: What his case reveals about the realities of child sex trafficking – https://theconversation.com/jeffrey-epstein-is-not-unique-what-his-case-reveals-about-the-realities-of-child-sex-trafficking-270127

Source: The Conversation – USA – By Jodie Childers, Assistant Professor of English, University of Virginia

As the United States faces increasing incidents of book banning and threats of governmental intervention – as seen in the temporary suspension of TV host Jimmy Kimmel – the common reflex for many who want to safeguard free expression is to turn to the First Amendment and its free speech protections.

Yet, the First Amendment has not always been potent enough to protect the right to speak. The Cold War presented one such moment in American history, when the freedom of political expression collided with paranoia over communist infiltration.

In 1947, the House Un-American Activities Committee subpoenaed 10 screenwriters and directors to testify about their union membership and alleged communist associations. Labeled the Hollywood Ten, the defiant witnesses – Alvah Bessie, Herbert Biberman, Lester Cole, Edward Dmytryk, Ring Lardner Jr., John Howard Lawson, Albert Maltz, Samuel Ornitz, Adrian Scott and Dalton Trumbo – refused to answer questions on First Amendment grounds. During his dramatic testimony, Lawson proclaimed his intent “to fight for the Bill of Rights,” which he argued the committee “was trying to destroy.”

They were all cited for contempt of Congress. Eight were sentenced to a year in federal prison, and two received six-month terms. Upon their release, they faced blacklisting in the industry. Some, like writer Dalton Trumbo, temporarily left the country.

As a researcher focused on the cultural cold war, I have examined the role the First Amendment played in the anti-communist hearings during the 1940s and ’50s.

The conviction and incarceration of the Hollywood Ten left a chilling effect on subsequent witnesses called to appear before congressional committees. It also established a period of repression historians now refer to as the Second Red Scare.

Although the freedom of speech is enshrined in the Constitution and prized by Americans, the story of the Second Red Scare shows that this freedom is even more fragile than it may now seem.

The Fifth Amendment communists

After the 1947 hearings, the term “unfriendly” became a label applied by the House Un-American Activities Committee and the press to the Hollywood Ten and any witnesses who refused to cooperate with the committee. These witnesses, who wanted to avoid the fate of the Hollywood Ten, began to shift away from the First Amendment as a legal strategy.

They chose instead to plead the Fifth Amendment, which grants people the right to protect themselves from self-incrimination. Many prominent artists during the 1950s, including playwright Lillian Hellman and singer and activist Paul Robeson, opted to invoke the Fifth when called before the committee and asked about their political affiliations.

The Fifth Amendment shielded hundreds of “unfriendly” witnesses from imprisonment, including artists, teachers and federal workers. However, it did not save them from job loss and blacklisting.

While they could avoid contempt citations by pleading the Fifth, they could not erase the stain of perceived guilt. This legal approach became so widespread that U.S. Sen. Joseph McCarthy, the country’s leading anti-communist crusader, disparaged these witnesses as “Fifth Amendment Communists” and boasted of purging their ranks from the federal government.

From Fifth back to First

In 1953, the physicist Albert Einstein became instrumental in revitalizing the force of the First Amendment as a rhetorical and legal tactic in the congressional hearings. Having fled Germany after the Nazis came to power, Einstein took a position at Princeton in 1933 and became an important voice in American politics.

Einstein’s philosophical battle against McCarthyism began with a letter to a Brooklyn high school teacher named William Frauenglass.

In April of that year, Frauenglass was subpoenaed to appear before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee, “the Senate counterpart” of the House Un-American Activities Committee, to testify about his involvement in an intercultural education seminar. After the hearing, in which Frauenglass declined to speak about his political affiliations, he risked potential termination from his position and wrote to Einstein seeking support.

In his response, Einstein urged Frauenglass and all intellectuals to enact a “revolutionary” form of complete “noncooperation” with the committee.

While Einstein advised noncompliance, he also acknowledged the potential risk: “Every intellectual who is called before one of the committees ought to refuse to testify, i.e., he must be prepared for jail and economic ruin, in short, for the sacrifice of his personal welfare in the interest of the cultural welfare of his country.”

Frauenglass shared his story with the press, and Einstein’s letter was published in full in The New York Times on June 12, 1953. It was also quoted in local papers around the country.

One week later, Frauenglass was fired from his job.

After learning about Einstein’s public position, McCarthy labeled the Nobel laureate “an enemy of America.” That didn’t stop Einstein’s campaign for freedom of expression. He continued to encourage witnesses to rely on the First Amendment.

When the engineer Albert Shadowitz received a subpoena in 1953 to appear before McCarthy’s Senate Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations, to answer questions about alleged ties to the Communist Party, he traveled to Einstein’s home to seek out the physicist’s advice. After consulting with Einstein, Shadowitz opted for the First Amendment over the Fifth Amendment.

On Dec. 16, 1953, Shadowitz informed the committee that he had received counsel from Einstein. He then voiced his opposition to the hearing on the grounds of the First Amendment: “I will refuse to answer any question which invades my rights to think as I please or which violates my guarantees of free speech and association.”

He was cited for contempt in August 1954 and indicted that November, facing a potential year in prison and US$1,000 fine. As an indicator of McCarthy’s diminishing power, the charge was thrown out in July 1955 by a federal judge.

The triumph of dissent

Well-known public figures also began to turn away from the Fifth Amendment as a legal tactic and to draw on the First Amendment.

In August 1955, when the folk musician Pete Seeger testified before the House Un-American Activities Committee, he voiced his rejection of the Fifth Amendment defense during the hearing. Seeger asserted that he wanted to use his testimony to call into question the nature of the inquiry altogether.

Pleading the protection of the First Amendment, Seeger refused “to answer any questions” related to his “political beliefs” and instead interrogated the committee’s right to ask such questions “under such compulsion as this.”

When the playwright Arthur Miller was subpoenaed by the committee in 1956, he also refused to invoke the Fifth. Both were cited for contempt. Seeger was sentenced to a year in prison. Miller was given the option to pay a $500 dollar fine or spend 30 days in jail.

As Seeger and Miller fought their appeals in court, McCarthy’s popularity continued to wane, and public sentiment began to shift.

Prompted by Einstein, the noncompliant witnesses in the 1950s reshaped the public discussion, refocusing the conversation on the importance of freedom of expression rather than the fears of imagined communist infiltration.

Although the First Amendment failed to keep the Hollywood Ten out of prison, it ultimately prevailed. Unlike the Hollywood Ten, both Miller and Seeger won their appeals. Miller spent no time in prison and Seeger only one day in jail. Miller’s conviction was reversed in 1958, Seeger’s in 1962. The Second Red Scare was over.

As the Second Red Scare shows, when free speech is under attack, strategic compliance may be useful for individuals. However, bold and courageous acts of dissent are critical for protecting First Amendment rights for everyone.

I met Pete Seeger personally while directing a documentary film about his environmental legacy.

– ref. First Amendment in flux: When free speech protections came up against the Red Scare – https://theconversation.com/first-amendment-in-flux-when-free-speech-protections-came-up-against-the-red-scare-267809