CHRISTOPHER H. PYLE, PROFESSOR OF POLITICS,
HONORED BY ACLU OF MASSACHUSETTS

SOUTH HADLEY, Mass. – Christopher H. Pyle, professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College, has been chosen to receive the Luther Knight Macnair Award from the American Civil Liberties Union of Massachusetts. Pyle will receive the award at the organization's annual meeting on Monday, May 24, in Boston, at which he will will speak on “McCarthyism, Then and Now.”

The Macnair Award is given for "significant contributions to civil liberties," and is named for Luther Macnair, who led the organization from 1950 to 1970. The annual meeting begins at 5:15 pm in the David A. Sargent Hall of Suffolk University Law School.

Pyle has been a teacher, scholar, and advocate of civil liberties for more than thirty years. In 1970, his disclosure of the military’s surveillance of civilian politics started the investigations historians refer to as "Watergate." As a consultant to three congressional committees he worked to end that surveillance and to bring the intelligence community back under the rule of law. Pyle is the author of three books: "The President, Congress, and the Constitution" (Free Press, 1984), "Military Surveillance of Civilian Politics" (Garland, 1986), and "Extradition, Politics, and Human Rights" (Temple, 2001), as well as numerous articles on civil liberties, including freedom of expression, equality, rights of privacy, student rights, emergency powers, the rights of alleged terrorists, the USA Patriot Act, and the new surveillance apparatus.