Unwelcome Guests

In less dogmatic days, most U.S. colleges were places where all sides of many questions were heard. Student groups sponsored after-hours speeches by Republicans, Democrats, Communists, Buchmanites, Zoroastrians and ecdysiasts. But times have changed. Last week, six colleges barred their doors to speakers who were Communists or fellow travelers.

The unwelcome guests: Novelist Howard (Freedom Road) Fast, an editor of the Communist New Masses; Communist Gerhart Eisler, reputed U.S. Comintern boss; Arnold Johnson, legislative director of the Communist Party; Carl Marzani, dismissed by the State Department for concealing his Communist card.

Johnson found the door shut at New York's City College, Eisler at the universities of Michigan and Wisconsin (Marzani was also banned at Wisconsin). Howard Fast tried to speak on four campuses (Columbia, Brooklyn, City College and Hunter College) before a fifth, New York University, let him in.

Most officials who banned the speeches were unwilling to say in one-syllable words that Communists as such were unwelcome. Eisler, Marzani and Fast were refused ostensibly because they had been convicted of perjury or contempt. Said an editorial in Campus, student newspaper at City College: "[The ban] insults the student body by casting doubt on its ability to evaluate, analyze and form decisions."

In Geneva, at the Commission on Human Rights, Eleanor Roosevelt diagnosed the basic ailment. Americans, she thought, "are not completely sure of our ability to make democracy work."

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