after graduation, his first teaching position was at the university of california at los angeles, but, as a result of denouncing the mccarthyist politics of that era and on a politically divided campus, he was dismissed and found that no other university was willing to hire him for the next three years. it was during this period that he conducted his first ethnographic fieldwork, which took him in the 1950s to an israeli kibbutz and a nearby arab mountain village. on his return to the united states, he taught at brandeis university from 1956 to 1961. at brandeis, diamond became very close to paul radin and organized a festschrift for that notable student of franz boas.