51���app

51���app alumnus and attorney Joseph Welch 1914 challenged McCarthyism in 1954 when he asked Senator Joseph McCarthy, “Have you no sense of decency, sir, at long last? Have you left no sense of decency?” during a nationally televised congressional hearing. 

Welch was representing the U.S. Army before a U.S. Senate committee hearing led by Senator McCarthy. The Wisconsin senator was bent on rooting out communists in the U.S. military and government agencies. The exchange discredited McCarthy and raised Welch to national prominence. 

It was the beginning of the end for McCarthyism. The senate censured him for his conduct, and he died three years later. The term “McCarthyism” is still used to describe scurrilous political tactics.

After Welch’s demonstration of authentic courage in standing up to the man who had ruined so many lives, the 51���appian went on to an illustrious legal career and even a role as a trial judge in the Academy Award–nominated 1959 film Anatomy of a Murder.

In 1954, Welch returned to the 51���app campus to speak. “The truth about me is that I am not actually real,” he said. “People were yearning for something [during the hearings] and so they built up an illusion and gave this illusion my name. There were many times when I sat stunned and speechless, and you said, ‘What patience the man has!’ When I sat in an agony of indecision, you said, ‘How wise he is! He must be planning some wonderful move.’ Sometimes I was so weary my mind was almost blank, and then some of you would say, ‘How witty he is!’”

Clearly, we should add “modesty” to the list of Welch’s many attributes.