Communists at Cornell

Cornell University's face was red last week with Communist trouble. Recently Cornell dropped Vladimir D. Kazakevich, longtime Communist and editor of the high-brow Marxist quarterly Science and Society. Kazakevich had been at tacked by the New York World-Telegram's Fred Woltman for hewing to the Communist line in a geography course for Army Specialized Training students. Last week it was noted in the press that Kazakevich's successor, Dr. Joshua Kunitz, was also well known in Communist circles. But Dr. Kunitz was only the latest of many Communist sympathizers who have recently found a temporary home above Cayuga's waters. The faculty of last summer's largely civilian course in Soviet culture included the following:

>Director Ernest Joseph Simmons (who selected the other teachers), author of books on Pushkin and Dostoevsky, New Masses contributor, and member of the (Communist) League of AmericanWriters.

>Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, the poet's grandson, 1936 supporter of Earl Browder for the U.S. Presidency.

>Sergei Kournakoff, onetime Imperial Russian captain who, the World-Telegram suggested, is the Communist Daily Worker's military expert.

Cornell has decided to drop the intensive civilian course, at least for a time. But the University still wanted to meet the army's request to teach Russian subjects to uniformed students. And that was a tough problem. According to President Edmund Ezra Day, it could not find an informed lecturer who was neither rabidly pro-nor anti-Soviet. The university is bewildered by the samovar tempest its choices created.

Dr. Kunitz uses a technique probably unique in U.S. higher education: he writes out his lectures, has them approved by his administrative chief before he reads them to his students. The students complain that the reading of lectures is not very stimulating.

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