McCarran Curtain

Although its aim is to exclude Communist spies and propagandists, the McCarran Act,* declares a group of eminent U.S. scientists in the current Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, is isolating U.S. science from vital European ideas and knowledge. It is also, they claim, antagonizing Europe's intellectuals and giving propaganda ammunition to Europe's Communists.

Dr. Edward A. Shils, professor of social sciences at the University of Chicago and consultant to the Air Force's ultra-secret Rand Corporation, leads off with a long and bitter analysis of the McCarran situation: "A very large number of distinguished European scientists, almost all of them anti-Communist and deeply devoted to the freedom in which scientific truth is sought and discovered, have been frustrated in their efforts to come to the United States to share their knowledge with their American colleagues. [Sometimes] their applications for visas have been .. . finally granted, but only after delays so long that the scientific meetings to which they were invited had taken place, or the teaching appointments for which they had been engaged had lapsed through their failure to arrive in time to fulfill them."

Much of the Bulletin is filled with case histories. The topnotch European scientists involved cannot tell why they were excluded from the U.S.; they were not told why. Some suspect it was because they belonged to large professional societies that have some Communist members. Others think that their birth in a country now dominated by Russia was the sole reason. A typical case is that of Professor Michael Polanyi, Hungarian-born chemist and philosopher long resident in Britain. He was kept from teaching at the University of Chicago, although he had been for 20 years one of the most active anti-Communists in Europe.

Says Nobel Prizewinner Harold C. Urey: "The difficulties in securing visas for foreign scientists .... threaten to make all satisfactory contact between American and European scientists impossible in the near future." Says Nobelman Arthur H. Compton, Chancellor of Washington University: "One of the greatest assets of the United States in the century past has been the freedom of our scientists -. . . to invite others to bring their ideas personally to us ... In a period when our welfare and safety depend on maintaining . . . leadership, it is of double importance that this freedom in the exchange of ideas be maintained."

Safe No. Foreign scientists, all friendly to the U.S., add their protests, and say that the McCarran Act has already damaged U.S. prestige. Says Physicist M. Louis Leprince Ringuet of France: "I have even had occasion to see the expression 'Iron Curtain of the West' applied quite widely to the U.S." Says Professor M. L. Oliphant of Australia, who was refused a visa although he was a key man in the U.S. atom bomb project: "At times I feel very bitter about the situation, since I believe that, in the fields of radar and atomic energy, I have been of some help to the U.S."

One reason why such things happen, says the Bulletin, is that the McCarran Act makes consular officers the judges of scientific visitors. The consuls realize their inability to estimate a scientist's politics, but they also realize that a no is safer than a yes. If they let the wrong man in, he may be publicly denounced for some fleeting contact with Communism 20 or 30 years ago. Then the consul's career might be in danger. Thus, it is prudent to delay or refuse the visa.

Growing Isolation. The worst effect, the Bulletin believes, is the growing isolation of U.S. science, which has never been self-sufficient. It is now almost impossible to hold international scientific conferences in the U.S., and nearly as difficult to hire foreign scientists to teach at U.S. universities. Even those who would probably get visas hate to take the risk of getting a consular runaround.

The Bulletin is not clear about just what should be done. Its authors (who are not lawyers) hope fervently that some way can be found to exclude Communist troublemakers without also excluding the European brains and knowledge on which the triumphs of U.S. technology have been built.

* The Immigration and Nationality Act of 1952 and its predecessor, the Internal Security Act of 1950, both sponsored by Nevada's Senator Pat McCarran.

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