Collision at Colorado

The University of Colorado, with 12,666 students on its stunning campus at Boulder, is fast growing "from a good university to a great university," according to President James Quigg Newton Jr. The genius of a great university is free expression limited by fair play. What should it do when the student newspaper calls a U.S. Senator a "murderer"?

The root cause of why Arizona's Barry Goldwater was thus recently libeled is an intense left-right political split at Colorado that goes clear back to Ku Klux Klan attacks on the school in the '20s. On one side: the student Colorado Daily, a few Socialists, and most campus Democrats, who include President Newton and five of the six university regents. On the other side: Republicans (including the other regent), the Campus Conservative Club, and its hero, Edward Rozek, 42, a Harvard-trained political scientist, a much decorated Polish officer in World War II and a zealous antiCommunist.

Last winter the conservatives invited Goldwater to speak at Colorado. The mere invitation inspired protest from Young Democrats, the 28-member Young Peoples Socialist League and the Daily. Rozek, incensed at the protests, introduced Goldwater with an 18-minute blast equating Goldwater critics with Communists or Communist dupes. Goldwater himself, speaking only 14 minutes, quietly delivered his standard anti-statism speech before 3,650 receptive students. Angered by criticism of his own performance, Rozek later went to court charging a university "conspiracy" against himself and "the basic precepts of our Constitution." Among those he is still trying to get on the witness stand: President Newton.

Nothing Personal. In this atmosphere, Daily Editor Gary Althen, 21, this fall allowed Carl Mitcham, 26, a late-blooming philosophy student, to publish a polemic calling Goldwater "a fool, a mountebank, a murderer, no better than a common criminal." Campus conservatives informed Goldwater. President Newton apologized. Unsatisfied, Goldwater wrote a stinging reply: "You either do not know what is going on in the university, or you don't care, and in charity I will presume the former. To put it briefly, I doubt that you have the interest or the concern to be in the position you hold."

Yale-educated President Newton, onetime mayor of Denver, blasted back. "You have made yourself a symbol of the suppressive forces which are waging an all-out assault on the university," he wrote. "It is always the same: 'Our way is the only American way. All others are un-American and subversive. You must silence those who do not agree with us!' Senator, I shall not silence them!"

At this point, Daily Editor Althen allowed Student Mitcham to publish another article that called Dwight Eisenhower an "old futzer." Haled before the university discipline committee, Mitcham was not even remotely chastised. Instead the committee upheld his right to express "a philosophical point of view," and ruled that the Goldwater article "could not be considered a personal attack."

Editor Fired. With eyebrows raised all over Colorado, and a TV-radio editorial reproof by Denver's KLZ ringing in his ears, President Newton finally got to work a fortnight ago and fired Althen from his job as editor. Up sprang student picket lines, with Mitcham bearing a derisive sign: "Senator, I will not silence them!" But the faculty senate, meeting behind doors under police guard, voted confidence in Newton.

Last week harried President Newton told a jampacked student audience why Editor Althen had to go (although both Althen and Mitcham remain enrolled as students). Academic freedom needs protection not only from those who do not believe in it, said Newton, but also from those who misuse it "to justify irresponsible actions which endanger the university." In a straw vote next day by 2,963 students, Newton's firing of Editor Althen was upheld by more than 2 to 1.

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