Christopher H. Pyle

Class of 1926 Professor of Politics

Specialization
Constitutional law, civil liberties, rights of privacy; American politics; American political thought; decision making in complex organizations

Chris Pyle is a teacher, scholar, and political activist whose interests range across history, law, and politics, with an emphasis on civil liberties.

In 1970 Pyle disclosed the military's surveillance of civilian politics and, as a consultant to three Congressional committees and the American Civil Liberties Union, worked to end it. In the 1970s and 1980s he was a frequent witness before Congressional committees and the author of two books: The President, Congress, and the Constitution (with Richard Pious, 1984) and Military Surveillance of Civilian Politics (1986). In the 1990s, Pyle helped his then teenaged sons to win a widely noted court case affirming the free speech rights of high school students. Hismost recent book, Extradition, Politics, and Human Rights (2001) analyzes how the United States has treated political fugitives, from the regicides of colonial times to the suspected terrorists and war criminals of today. Based partly on work done with the International Law Association, this book makes extensive proposals for legal reform.

Pyle is currently writing a book on the war crimes of the Bush administration. He has also written extensively on freedom of expression, equal protection of the laws, rights of privacy, investigative journalism, terrorism, the detention of aliens and citizens without trial, and President Bush’s plan to try alleged terrorists before military tribunals.His writings have appeared in hundreds of newspapers, including the New York Times, the Washington Post, the Wall Street Journal, and the Los Angeles Times, as well as in the Nation, the Washington Monthly, the Civil Liberties Review, Foreign Policy, the American Political Science Review, the Political Science Quarterly, and the Boston University Law Review. He has also received fellowships and grants from the Russell Sage and Mellon Foundations, the National Endowment for the Humanities, the Institute for the Study of World Politics, the Aspen Institute, and the Fulbright Program. 

Pyle’s articles on military surveillance of civilian politics won the Polk and Hillman awards for investigative journalism in 1971 and 1970, respectively. In 2004 he received the Luther Knight Macnair Award from the ACLU of Massachusetts for his contributions to civil liberties as a “teacher, scholar, and model citizen activist.” That same year he was elected chairman of the Petra Foundation, a national organization that recognizes and assists “unsung heroes” who make extraordinary contributions to social justice. He is also a member of the board of the ACLU of Massachusetts.

Pyle has taught intelligence agents in the army; policemen at the John Jay College of Criminal Justice; undergraduates at University College, Dublin; law students at Harvard; and graduate students at Universidad Complutense de Madrid. He has chaired Mount Holyoke's Department of Politics and the College's programs in complex organizations and American studies. In 2007, he received the College's distinguished teaching award.

Between semesters, Pyle has taught a variety of short courses, including woodworking (building a boat with students), the politics of Northern Ireland (taking his students to Belfast), and colonial history (role playing, in costume, at Plimoth Plantation). In 2005 and again in 2007 he took students to sea on tall ships, where they worked aloft, set and furled sails, manned the helm, and learned the basic arts of seamanship and navigation.

News Links:

"Former Officers Air Military Secrets at Discussion," Daily Hampshire Gazette, April 7, 2008

"Four MHC Professors Celebrated," Office of Communications, April 27, 2007

"J-Term Adventure: MHC Students at Sea," Office of Communications, December 20, 2007

"Are Terror Suspicions Getting Out of Hand?" Sunday Republican, January 1, 2006

"The Lawless Ask For Our Trust," Daily Hampshire Gazette, February 3, 2006

"Professor Criticizes Massachusetts's Anti-Terror Efforts," Boston Globe, September 26, 2005

"Ban on Flag-Burning Annual Trivial Pursuit," Sunday Republican, July 10, 2005

MHC Bounty: A Journey at Sea, Weblog of the January-Term 2005 Course

"No Mutiny on This Bounty: Students Put to Sea," Office of Communications, January 31, 2005

"McCarthyism - Then and Now," Address to the American Civil Liberties Union, May 24, 2004

"War on Terrorism Shouldn't Stoop to Torture," Sunday Republican, February 29, 2004

"How Immigration Threw A Travelor to the Wolves," San Francisco Chronicle, January 4, 2004

"For Professor Christopher Pyle, the Patriot Act is Déjà-Vu," College Street Journal, November 7, 2003

"Domestic Spying - Again?" Hartford Courant, November 20, 2002

"Please, No More Domestic Spies!" Providence Journal, August 2, 2002

"An Army Of Police At Bush's Disposal," Hartford Courant, July 29, 2002

"Domestic Spying Catches No One," Los Angeles Times, June 9, 2002

"The Trouble With Tribunals," Daily Hampshire Gazette, May 10, 2002

"Inventing America: The Perennial Search for a Usable Past," Speech to the Pilgrim Society of Plymouth, MA, December 21, 2001

"Tribunal Myths Debunked," Baltimore Sun, Sunday, December 16, 2001

"Bush Order Removes Basic Rights," Daily Hampshire Gazette, November 22, 2001