New England First Amendment Center

Cavanagh

By Rosanna Cavanagh, executive director, New England First Amendment Coalition

I was born in 1975 so I don’t have memories of the Watergate era, but my parents do.  My Dad was a professor at Princeton at the time and had recently been featured in Vogue magazine for his efforts to organize “Movement for a New Congress,” a reaction to the Cambodia invasion crisis. A quarter of the students at Princeton were taking part in this effort, an epicenter of the student movement to defeat supporters of this sudden expansion of the Vietnam War to another country.  The Nixon Administration told colleges that they would risk their tax exempt status if they permitted any political activity on campus.  My Dad was called into a meeting with Wall Street lawyers and told that the university was at risk and he could work for no pay if he wanted to stay.  Well, that wasn’t really an option for him at the time with four mouths to feed. He told them that he was taking care of his academic responsibilities, that he had a family to support, that he would continue doing the ‘Movement’ and they had no right to ask him to do this and violate his First Amendment rights.  My Mom, who stayed at home, had distinct memories of hearing constant clicking on the phones, as they were tapped.  She also received a threatening phone call when William Rehnquist was up for confirmation to the Supreme Court demanding that my Dad report back immediately to the Justice Department if he would testify and what his sources were. Continue reading ‘NEFAC calls on Justice Department to return seized phone records to the AP’ »