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Maurice Halperin: From Sooner Subversive To Soviet Spy, Landry Brewer

Faculty Articles & Research

Maurice Halperin was a University of Oklahoma (OU) professor in the late 1930s and early 1940s when the state’s governor and legislature began actively pursuing Communists in higher education. After Halperin fell under suspicion, he left the university for a job with the federal government’s wartime intelligence agency. Still under a cloud of suspicion, Halperin eventually fled the country, never to return. Shortly after the Cold War ended, evidence emerged verifying the allegations made by his accusers that, during the 1930s, Maurice Halperin was a covert Oklahoma Communist who later betrayed his country by committing espionage for the Soviet Union.