As we have seen, America’s concern for language studies and their accompanying cultural ideologies spikes during times of warfare. During the First World War, teachers of German were admonished for their real or perceived “pro-Hun” classroom propaganda. Although important voices insisted on the necessity of understanding the language and culture of the enemy, their arguments were ignored. German enrollments tumbled and never recovered. The Army Specialized Training Program, on the other hand, recognized the strategic importance of linguistic and cultural studies in advancing the war effort. However, the study of Russian was open to contestation: although Russia was an ally militarily, that nation’s political and economic structure, called “communist” in a non-nuanced fashion, was anathema to the capitalist ideology of the United States. Cornell’s Russian program became a pawn in the bombastic anti-Communist journalistic agenda. I detail the exchanges in the popular press and internal university correspondence. I also reproduce course syllabi and evaluations.