Howard Bruce Franklin (February 28, 1934 – May 19, 2024) was an American cultural historian, scholar, and left-wing activist. His main areas of academic focus were science fiction, prison literature, environmentalism, the Vietnam War and its aftermath, and American cultural history. He wrote or edited twenty booksNote: many of his works have been translated into German, French, Spanish, Korean, Taiwanese, Vietnamese and others and three hundred professional articles and participated in making four films. He was instrumental in helping to debunk false public speculation that Vietnam was continuing to hold prisoners of war. He helped to establish science fiction writing as a genre worthy of serious academic study. In 2008, the American Studies Association awarded him the Pearson-Bode Prize for Lifetime Achievement in American Studies.American Studies Association (ASA) 2016, Bode-Pearson Prize Recipients, 1975-2015, Retrieved February 9, 2016, "...2008: H. Bruce Franklin, Rutgers University, Newark..."
Born into a working-class family, Franklin worked his way through college and served in the US Air Force from 1956 to 1959. He was hired as a professor at Stanford University in 1961. A critic of the Vietnam War, he was one of the founding members of the Bay Area Revolutionary Union, heading its Palo Alto chapter. After a split within that group, he became a leader of the leftist organization Venceremos. Franklin was fired from Stanford University in January 1972 for allegedly inciting students to riot in connection with those activities, in a case which drew nationwide media attention. In December 1972 he and other members of Venceremos were arrested in connection with the escape from prison two months earlier of Ronald Beaty, in which one guard was killed. Charges against Franklin were ultimately dropped.Gabriel, Trip. "H. Bruce Franklin, Scholar Fired for His Antiwar Views, Is Dead at 90". The New York Times. June 7, 2024.
Franklin became a tenured full professor of English and American Studies at Rutgers University–Newark in 1975. He also held the John Cotton Dana endowed chair at the institution from 1987 until retiring in 2015. Thereafter, he retained the title of professor emeritus.
Early life Born to a working-class family in Brooklyn on February 28, 1934, Franklin held numerous jobs while working his way through college. From 1951 to 1952, he was a batch worker at the Mayfair Photofinishing Company. In 1953, he was an upholsterer for the Carb Manufacturing Company, and in 1954 was promoted to foreman of the shipping department. He graduated summa cum laude from Amherst College in 1955 as a member of Phi Beta Kappa.
In 1956, he married Jane Morgan, a graduate of Duke University. They had three children together and were married until her death in 2023.
From 1955 to 1956, he was a tugboat deckhand and mate for the Pennsylvania RR Marine department, based in Jersey City, New Jersey. He served in the United States Air Force from 1956 to 1959 as a navigator and intelligence officer. In 1966, he resigned his commission in the Air Force Reserve as a protest against the Vietnam War.
Stanford years Franklin earned his doctorate from Stanford University in 1961. He was hired that year at the university as an assistant professor of English; he was promoted to associate professor in 1965.Rutgers University, Faculty biography , Retrieved February 10, 2016 He was also a lecturer in San Jose, California's municipal adult education department from 1963 to 1964.
He became an expert on American writers, particularly Herman Melville and Nathaniel Hawthorne. At one point, he served as president of the Melville Society. His first book, The Wake of the Gods: Melville's Mythology, examined Melville's use of mythologies and intellectual milieu from Meso-American to Sanskrit. Franklin wrote a scholarly edition of Melville's The Confidence Man: His Masquerade, which traced obscure classical and "alien" references embedded in Melville's prose.
Franklin and his family spent a year in France from 1966 to 1967. He taught for six months at Stanford's campus in Tours, France, and then moved in Paris. There he and his wife Jane studied Marxist theory, helped organize the Free University of Paris, and participated in setting up the European network of GI deserters, who were primarily young men opposed to the Vietnam War.Jones, Clarence B. What Would Martin Say? (Harper Perennial, 2009), p. 209. When he returned to the United States in the late 1960s, he became a prominent activist in the movement against the Vietnam War.
Maoism, Revolutionary Union, and Venceremos In 1968, Franklin was one of twenty-four founders of the Revolutionary Union. After Franklin left the RU, the organization became the Revolutionary Communist Party.
The organization was infiltrated by the FBI, which planted informers within the leadership of the group to heighten members' "suspicions of each other". Detailed information about this period and the FBI's attempts to "neutralize" (their word) Franklin can be found in the thousands of pages which he later collected under the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA). He donated this material to the Bancroft Library. Doctrinal differences soon emerged between followers of Franklin and followers of Robert Avakian over revolutionary strategy.
In a matter of months Franklin, along with roughly half of RU's members, left to join a Chicano-based leftist group in Palo Alto called Venceremos. Some of its members were active in prisoner outreach programs.
Termination from Stanford At Stanford, in 1971, Franklin was accused of inciting anti-war protests on campus. At a campus rally on February 10, Franklin made a speech protesting a war effort by the United States during the Vietnam War to invade the neighboring nation of Laos. According to the testimony of one witness, Franklin urged students assembled at the rally to disrupt university functions by shutting down its computer facility.
Franklin concluded his speech at that rally by saying:
See, now what we're asking is for people to make that little tiny gesture to show that we're willing to inconvenience ourselves a little bit and to begin to shut down the most obvious machinery of war, such as, and I think it is a good target, that Computation Center.Franklin v. Atkins, 409 F. Supp. 439, 443 (1976), available at Justia.com
A report in The Stanford Daily student publication suggested that Franklin urged protestors to "resist police efforts" with the effect of "inciting a riot". After his speech, students occupied the Stanford computer center, and more than 100 riot police were summoned.
Stanford president Richard Lyman gave Franklin a letter, claiming that he violated an agreement entitled "Statement of Policy on Appointments and Tenure", with the specific complaint that Franklin "deliberately contributed to a disturbance which forced the cancellation of a speech by Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge at Dinkelspiel Auditorium". A tenure-review committee was chosen, with professors from assorted academic departments. A lecture hall was converted into a makeshift courtroom. Stanford hired a major Los Angeles law firm, with lead attorney Paul Valentine, to argue the university's case, while Franklin, lacking funds as he was unemployed, had to defend himself with advice from a law student. Evidence was heard, witnesses were cross-examined, summations were given, and the panel left to consider its verdict.
Franklin was found guilty of three charges of "inciting student disruptions". Accordingly, Stanford fired Franklin in January 1972.Franklin (H. Bruce) collection, 1969-1980. Online Archive of California. He was the only tenured professor to be fired from Stanford. The termination generated nationwide media exposure and brought attention to the issue of academic freedom and freedom of speech.
For a period, he continued to be active with Venceremos, and in December 1972 was arrested on charges of harboring Ronald Beaty, a federal fugitive. Other Venceremos members had helped Beaty escape during a transfer to court, killing one prison guard and wounding another in the process. At the time of his arrest Franklin praised Beaty's escape as a revolutionary act but denied involvement."SLAYING LINKED TO RADICAL GROUP". The New York Times. December 24, 1972. Beaty was recaptured a month later. Charges against Franklin were ultimately dropped, but other members of Venceremos were tried and convicted in connection with this crime, and the group dissolved soon after.
After being terminated from Stanford, Franklin was out of work for the next three years. Blacklisted, Franklin did not have regular employment during these years, although he had brief visiting faculty positions at Wesleyan and Yale universities from 1974 to 1975.
A decade later, in 1985, with the help of a lawyer from the American Civil Liberties Union, Franklin appealed the termination, and sought back pay, damages, and reinstatement, but the effort was not successful. A state court upheld Stanford's ruling, and the California Supreme Court refused to hear the case. ACLU lawyer Margaret Casey said the ruling would have a "chilling effect" on the power of academics to express their thinking freely.
Rutgers years In 1975, Franklin was hired by Rutgers University–Newark as a full professor with tenure. In 1987, he was appointed as the John Cotton Dana Professor of English and American Studies, a title he retained until his retirement in 2015. Franklin's academic career has diverse areas of scrutiny, which relate mostly to the topic of American cultural history. In 2014, he was influential in organizing Rutgers faculty to block the choice of former United States Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as commencement speaker: Franklin's political views softened in later life.
In 2014, Temple University scholar Carolyn Karcher summed up Franklin's achievements by saying that he has an "extraordinary gift for teaching us to read our history in our literature and to glean from both insights that can help us alter our future." Franklin retired in 2016.
Science fiction