Efforts by state legislators to curtail collective bargaining or destroy public-sector unions, abolish tenure, and decrease funding for education are spreading throughout the country. This author states that the scapegoating and vilification of unions and teachers, however, are not new. The current attacks have historical parallels, when cries of "Communist subversion" were used in New York City to silence dissenting voices in academia and to weaken faculty and teacher unionism. The history of this dissent can be tracked through powerful and moving photographs, political cartoons, flyers, and illustrations from the 1930s and the early 1940s, when students and faculty members at the City College of New York (CCNY) were struggling against a college administration, the New York City Board of Higher Education, and outside political forces that sought to eliminate dissenting voices. In this article, the author discusses how CCNY witnessed the largest political purge of faculty members in US history.