Saved from BeHrand Russell

Manhattan's brittle little Bishop Manning started it. Month ago he wrote a letter to the newspapers, viewing with alarm Bertrand Russell's appointment to teach mathematics and logic at the College of the City of New York, quoted the learned Earl's views on adultery (TIME, March 11). Last week, with the aid of a Brooklyn housewife and a morally aroused judge, the Bishop won.

The Brooklyn housewife, one Mrs. Jean Kay, wife of a dentist, mother of two (boy & girl), made the Russell appointment her business because her daughter might be going to C. C. N. Y. some day soon. A roly-poly lawyer named Joseph Goldstein sprang to her aid. Under his guidance she filed a taxpayer's suit in New York Supreme Court to oust the Earl, on grounds that he was an alien and an advocate of sexual immorality.

Big, burly Justice John E. McGeehan, good Catholic, good Democratic "organization judge," got the case. Before him last week appeared Lawyer Goldstein with his plaintiff and four of his Lordship's published works,* proceeded to review the offending books. Said Critic Goldstein, Philosopher Russell's writings are "lecherous, salacious, libidinous, lustful, venerous, erotomaniac, aphrodisiac, atheistic, irreverent, narrow-minded, untruthful and bereft of moral fiber." Furthermore, he roared, the Earl had run an English nudist colony, gone in for salacious poetry, winked at homosexuality.

For Petitioner Kay, the session marked her first appearance in a courtroom. Her husband, interviewed, said proudly: "She's no prude. She listens to a nice joke. She don't tell them, but she listens to them." With the philosopher's works under his arm, Justice McGeehan left court. In a blistering 17-page decision he held:

> That the Board of Higher Education, in making the Russell appointment, had in effect established a "Chair of Indecency" at City College.

> That Russell's doctrines would encourage violations of the State's penal law.

>-That academic freedom cannot "permit a teacher to teach . . . that sexual intercourse between students, where the female is under the age of 18 years, is proper."

> That the Board had no right to appoint an alien to a city teaching job.

> That it should have given him a competitive examination.

> That, all these things being true, Earl Russell's appointment was hereby revoked.

At week's end Bertrand Russell authorized the American Civil Liberties Union to appeal in his behalf.

At the University of California at Los Angeles, where he is at present lecturing, 67-year-old Bertrand Russell gasped: "It strikes me between the eyes. I don't know what to think or say. I want it understood that I did not seek the position. ... I am not interested in sex as is Bishop Manning."

Said Brooklyn's Mrs. Kay: "I am glad that right and decency have triumphed. I have been only a symbol in this great fight. ... I believe all mothers have a philosophy which is not only comparable to that of some of our greatest savants, but superior in many respects."

* What I Believe, Marriage and Morals, Education and the Good Life, Education and the Modern World.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.