Ask a Manager: My new job requires me to take an oath of allegiance

[ermingarden]

(#5 at the link.)

I am a PhD student graduating this summer, and I have just signed on to a fantastic job that I am really excited about. I’m moving from the east coast to California, where I will work for the University of California with my salary paid by a federal grant.

I received my onboarding paperwork today, and along with all the normal stuff, it included an “Oath of Allegiance.” I am required to sign it in front of a witness who is “legally authorized to administer oaths.” Here’s the full text:

“I do solemnly swear (or affirm) that I will support and defend the Constitution of the United States and the Constitution of the State of California against all enemies, foreign and domestic; that I will bear true faith and allegiance to the Constitution of the United States and the State of California; that I take this obligation freely, without any mental reservation or purpose of evasion; and that I will well and faithfully discharge the duties upon which I am about to enter.”

Am I right in thinking this is insane? On the one hand, it doesn’t bother me that much because I can’t see it ever coming into play. I definitely don’t have the type of job where I’m likely to encounter enemies, foreign and domestic, seeking harm to the constitutions of my state or country (and if they do I’m peacing out, thanks). But I feel weird about signing something this intense, and I don’t really want to. Can they legally require this as a condition of employment?

Yep, they can require it. In fact, it looks like all California state employees are required to take that oath, and all federal employees have one too.

Comments

[ermingarden]

I'm bringing this one over here because I'd like to see what people here think of this – it seems so completely normal to me that I was surprised the LW was taken aback! But it's a little difficult for me to articulate, now that I think about it, why it's fine for a government to require an oath but totally bonkers for a private company to do so (although in that case the oath itself was also forty pages long and frankly bizarre).

Thinking about it some more, it's understandable that LW could be weirded out, considering that for LW's purposes, whether they're working at a state university or a private university presumably doesn't really affect what they're doing in their day-to-day – academia isn't what we traditionally think of as a classic "public service" job. I'm contrasting that with my job, for example, where a loyalty oath feels completely expected, because it's a job performing an inherently governmental function, as opposed to a situation where you just happen to be working for the government but could just as easily be working for a private employer.

Anyone else have thoughts on this?

[oursin]

I am astonished this is still a thing! - there was an immense hoohah in 1973 when Jessica Mitford, by then a famed muck-raking journalist, was invited to teach a course at San Jose State University, and found that she would be required to take a loyalty oath and be fingerprinted. This did not sit well with her convictions, even though by then I think she'd left the Communist Party.

[chiasmata]

As a UK-er, we don’t have (a) oaths or (b) fingerprinting as a standard thing for public sector jobs, so my eyes are in stalks here!

[annotated_em]

I'm a US fed and this seemed so routine to me that I was more surprised that the LW was surprised by it. Grant you, a state-level job seems a bit out of scope but without knowing more details, enh, maybe it's relevant? My agency works with sensitive data, though, so we have to be very careful about making sure everyone takes the responsibility to maintain privacy very seriously.

Of course, for a bit I was in a position involving new hire orientation and got to administer that oath. Of all the dozens and dozens of people I helped bring on board, I think there was one person who declined to take the oath and walked out when we got to that point.

[norwich36]

I am also a California state employee so I had to take that oath, and I do remember side eyeing it a bit at the time, but I basically talked myself around to melannen's perspective on serving the public interest. I didn't have to get fingerprinted for the job, though (maybe now people do? It was more than two decades ago) but did for my California state ID (well, just thumbprinted but now I'm in that system), and it definitely made me more nervous than the loyalty oath.

[edenfalling]

I had to get fingerprinted once for a job, but it was for an agency that provided assistants/caretakers to disabled people (and might have had some state funding? I don't remember exactly), so they wanted to be sure they weren't hiring people who would abuse their clients. That seemed reasonable to me under the circumstances!

I've never had to take any kind of loyalty oath, though now I'm wondering if my brother ever had to do that when he did contract/consultant work for the FBI as a language instructor...

[cereta]

I've had to do this for jobs at state universities. I was a little weirded out by it but nothing more. I might be a little more concerned about it now as an educator, depending on what state I was in, but not much more than just being an educator in those states period.