Princeton University

Princeton University enters the account as both a place of academic opportunity and an institution whose response to political pressure shaped a scientist’s career. Its documented role centers on David Bohm: the university initially supported him after his refusal to cooperate with congressional investigators, but later suspended him and barred him from campus when he was indicted for contempt of Congress, and ultimately did not renew his teaching contract.

Bohm’s Position and the University’s Initial Support

In 1949, David Bohm was teaching at Princeton University when he appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee. On the advice of his lawyer, Clifford Durr, he refused to cooperate, invoking the First and Fifth Amendments. The university issued a statement supporting him at the time, publicly standing by a faculty member who had declined to answer the committee’s questions.

That support was limited in duration. More than a year later, Bohm and Giovanni Rossi Lomanitz were indicted for contempt of Congress. Bohm was arrested on December 4, 1950, and released on $1,500 bail. Princeton University then suspended him from all teaching duties and barred him from entering the campus.

Suspension and the End of Bohm’s Appointment

Six months after his arrest, Bohm was tried and acquitted. The acquittal did not restore his position: Princeton University chose not to renew his teaching contract when it expired that June. The sequence—from an initial statement of support to suspension, exclusion from campus, and nonrenewal—shows the practical limits of the university’s earlier backing amid the political investigation.

The account does not describe the university’s internal deliberations or give a formal explanation for its final decision. It does establish the professional consequence: despite his acquittal, Bohm lost his Princeton teaching post and thereafter pursued the opportunities available to him abroad.

Princeton in the Wider Academic Setting

Princeton also serves as the setting for Oppenheimer’s intellectual and public life, though the account distinguishes the university from the Institute for Advanced Study, which he directed. Oppenheimer presided over his academic domain in Princeton while dividing his time among Institute business, intellectual work, travel, speeches, and classified meetings in Washington. The distinction matters: his directorship was at the Institute, not Princeton University.

In 1949, Oppenheimer invited George F. Kennan to Princeton for a classified seminar on nuclear weapons. Their conversations and correspondence placed Princeton within a wider network of academic discussion about nuclear policy, while Bohm’s experience at the university showed how political scrutiny could reach into the conditions of academic work. The institution’s significance in this account lies in that contrast: it was a site of scholarly exchange, but also the setting where congressional pressure was followed by concrete professional exclusion.