[3] His maternal grandfather had commanded a regiment of freed slaves in the Civil War, and his father James Henry Dunham was a Presbyterian minister who resigned his ministry in 1912, when Barrows was seven years old, because his study of philosophy and science, begun in the 1880s and 90s at the then College of New Jersey and at the University of Berlin, led him ultimately to disbelieve in supernatural religion.
At Princeton he was introduced to the formal study of philosophy, and though he began teaching English at Franklin and Marshall College upon receiving his A.B.
Called before the House Committee on Un-American Activities on February 27, 1953, Dunham refused to answer any of the questions posed to him, providing only his name, date of birth, and birthplace.
[4] The choice to defy the Committee so early in his testimony was a direct by-product of successful criminal prosecutions against prior witnesses (such as the Hollywood Ten) who had declined to answer based upon the First Amendment protections of freedom of speech and association and others who had answered some questions about themselves but unsuccessfully asserted the Fifth Amendment privilege as a basis to decline to provide information about others.
[5] In 1981 the Board of Trustees of Temple University reinstated Dunham, following a recommendation by President Marvin Wachman, acknowledging that they should not have dismissed him for exercising his constitutional rights.