Undue Process

Brooklyn College's Professor Harry Slochower was an evasive, smart-aleck witness before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee. When Slochower, teacher of German and literature and an authority on Thomas Mann, appeared before the subcommittee in 1952, he was asked, for example, if he could identify any members of the Communist Party. Retorted Slochower: "I am sure Joe Stalin is a member." Slochower invoked the Fifth Amendment three times in refusing to say whether he had been a Communist in 1940 and 1941. He was fired by Brooklyn College under a New York City charter provision that requires automatic dismissal for all city employees who plead the Fifth Amendment. Last week, in a 5-4 decision, the U.S. Supreme Court declared Slochower's dismissal invalid.

Said the majority opinion, written by Justice Tom Clark: "At the outset we must condemn the practice of imputing a sinister meaning to the exercise of a person's constitutional right under the Fifth Amendment . . . The privilege against self-incrimination would be reduced to a hollow mockery if its exercise could be taken as equivalent either to a confession of guilt or a conclusive presumption of perjury."

Clark's sweeping language was interpreted by many as a far-ranging decree on the touchy Fifth Amendment issue. Actually, the decision had narrow application. It dealt only with the New York City charter provision--and only to the extent that Slochower had not been given a hearing and had, therefore, been denied due process of law. The opinion (Chief Justice Earl Warren and Justices Hugo Black, Felix Frankfurter and William O. Douglas concurring) was, in fact, careful to point out: "This is not to say that Slochower has a constitutional right to be an associate professor of German at Brooklyn College. The state has broad powers in the selection and discharge of its employees, and it may be that proper inquiry would show Slochower's continued employment to be inconsistent with a real interest in the state."

Brooklyn College announced that it would follow the Supreme Court decision by reinstating Slochower (making him eligible to receive about $30,000 in back pay), then promptly suspend him on new charges of "untruthfulness and perjury."

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