Vera Shlakman, Professor Emerita of Social Work, died Nov. 5, 2017. She was 108.
Professor Shlakman was an economics professor at Queens College when she was dismissed in 1952 for refusing to tell United States Senate investigators whether she had ever been a card-carrying Communist. She was the last survivor among more than a dozen faculty members in New York City's public colleges who were removed from their positions during the "Red Scare."
Professor Shlakman, who earned her doctorate at Columbia University, did not hold another full-time academic position until 1966, when she was appointed Professor of Social Work at Columbia, a position from which she retired in 1978,
Professor Emerita Alice Kessler-Harris described the impact of Shlakman's scholarship and her firing from Queens College in THe New York Times obituary.
Please click here to read the Times obituary in full.
