Counterattack (Cont'd)

U.S. educators had made it clear that they were thoroughly fed up: the hunt for subversive influences on the campus had gotten out of hand (TIME, June 27). Last week, two more college presidents cried halt.

The University of Chicago's Robert M. Hutchins could see nothing but harm coming from this "cloak-and-stiletto work . . . [It] will not merely mean that many persons will suffer for acts that they did not commit, or for acts that were legal when committed, or for no acts at all. Far worse is the end result, which will be that critics, even of the mildest sort, will be frightened into silence . . ." Loyalty oaths for teachers are utterly useless, said Hutchins, "for teachers who are disloyal will certainly be dishonest; they will not shrink from a little perjury."

Yale's President Charles Seymour agreed. He wanted no Communists on Yale's campus, but, said he, "we shall permit no hysterical witch hunt. We shall not impose an oath of loyalty upon our faculty." Yale, he said, had abandoned trying to "enforce conformity by oath over 125 years ago." Despite this "lack of control," added Seymour, "we have done pretty well in service to 'church and civil state.' "

By last week, the protests of the counterattackers had begun to get results. As faculty resistance mounted, the University of California Regents watered down the new loyalty oath that they had proposed. Staff members would no longer have to declare that they were not dabbling in subversive doctrine, though they would be asked to swear that they are not members of the Communist Party.

Meanwhile, U.S. colleges turned a cold, unfriendly eye on the plan of the House Committee on Un-American Activities to investigate college textbooks. Princeton and Cornell said that they saw no reason to send lists of books to the committee. If Congressmen wanted to know what Cornell was teaching, said Cornell's Chancellor Edmund Ezra Day, "they had better take courses there and find out."

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