while I was truly terrified by their tactics and their threats, I was able to stonewall their questions and refuse to give them the answers they were so desperate for. I came to realize that they, as a group, were really a very dumb bunch of redneck, illiterate people, clumsily wielding a vast amount of power over others. The investigations ruined many lives and careers. For example, in March 1959, the chairman of the University of Florida geography department, Professor Sigismond Diettrich, a married man, attempted suicide after being interrogated by the committee's agents and then forced to resign by the university's president. In April, the university fired at least 15 faculty members and librarians. This was done in semi-secret, with no public announcement, so the students of the university had only a murky notion what was happening. Over the next year, the university continued "investigations and expulsions of students and faculty" because, to pacify the Johns Committee, it had committed itself to "legitimate self-policing". By 1963, the Johns Committee could boast of having caused the firing of 39 professors and deans, as well as the revoking of teaching certificates for 71 public school teachers, all suspected or admitted homosexuals. Scores of students were interrogated and subsequently expelled from public colleges across the state, as well. "Florida State University and the University of South Florida attempted to make things difficult for investigators. But the University of Florida and its president, J. Wayne Reitz, have been criticized for cooperating fully with the Johns Committee." He permitted Johns Committee uniformed investigators to come on campus and to make tape recordings of interrogation sessions with faculty and students. Many faculty were too afraid of exposure to resist the violation of their civil liberties: The American Association of University Professors informed professors of their rights, but those who had something to fear were too afraid to ask for an arrest warrant or subpoena. Either of these would mean that their private lives could be played out for the public to read about in the newspaper. The Johns Committee also investigated faculty at the University of South Florida, a newer university the Pork Choppers looked on with disfavor. Attack on academic freedom Not content with rooting out homosexuals, the Johns Committee's investigators also interfered with academic freedom on state college campuses: Once in Tampa [at the University of South Florida], the committee singled out faculty