Clamor & Calm

The noisy fighting stirred up by congressional investigations into campus Communism grew even louder last week. But according to the booing and cheering, spectators outside the actual ring were throwing some of the best punches.

Few observers even tried to deny that Congress has the right to investigate colleges or anything else it chooses. But several spectators, including Methodist Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, Unitarian Dr. A. Powell Davies and the Very Rev. Francis B. Sayre Jr., Dean of Washington Cathedral, cried "foul" at the tactics of the investigators. Despite the continuing uproar, Representative Harold H. Velde and his House Un-American Activities Committee went to work.

Much or Little. In the committee room, where the main bout took place, there was an air of determined calm. Robert Gorham Davis, Smith College English professor and first witness at the open hearings, patiently repeated a personal history. He had joined the Communist Party in 1937 while teaching at Harvard; two years later, disillusioned by the Nazi-Soviet pact, he quit. Party members, he said, had tried to recruit faculty members, not to influence students. Now, in his opinion, "the influence of Communists is very slight" on the teaching profession. With some reluctance, the slim, spectacled teacher identified in the public hearing former fellow Communists about whom he had already testified in private.

Among those named by Davis, Author Granville (The Great Tradition) Hicks testified about his own disappointing romance with Communism. Said Hicks: "... I would go along with Senator Taft in feeling that I would not want to make an absolute rule . . . There are situations in which it would be better to let a Communist keep his [teaching] job than to disrupt the whole fabric of academic freedom." But if a Communist brought his politics into the classroom, that was something else again. The trouble with all these investigations, Hicks continued, is that the emphasis always falls on "how much" the Communists have infiltrated American colleges. It might be better, said he, to emphasize "how little . . . The fear in this country is in part a very real and understandable fear of the Soviet Union and its agents . . . Over and above that, I think there is a mood of rather vague apprehension that is not rational and that is dangerous, and . . . that mood of irrational apprehension has been encouraged in part by congressional--I will say legislative investigating committees . . ."

Said Representative Francis Walter: "I am inclined to agree with you that we are exaggerating the situation now."

Old Refusal, New Twist. The hostile witnesses, however, won no one's sympathy. Invoking the First and Fifth Amendments, Harvard Physics Professor Wendell H. Furry refused to talk when asked whether he was or ever had been a member of the Communist Party. And to the old refusal he added a new twist. Once his interrogation was over, he issued a press statement. He wanted to assure his friends, said Furry, carefully watching his tenses, that he is not now a member of the party and that he has never done anything with intent to injure the U.S.

Another witness, Barrows (Man Against Myth) Dunham, head of Temple University's philosophy department, grudgingly gave his name and address, his birthday and birthplace. To answer any other question, even about his education, he said, might tend to incriminate him. The committee promptly recommended that Dunham be cited for contempt.

Calm Comment. By week's end the testimony had echoed far beyond the committee room. At Smith College, President Benjamin F. Wright announced that Robert Davis' past was unimportant. He is anti-Communist now, said Wright, and a "valuable and highly respected member of the Smith College faculty." Temple's President Robert L. Johnson, new head of the Voice of America (see NATIONAL AFFAIRS), suspended Philosopher Dunham because "you have deliberately created a doubt as to your loyalty status." And at Harvard, Provost Paul H. Buck said that Professor Furry's antics would "be given full and deliberate consideration by ... university authorities."

Speaking at Wellesley, Eleanor Roosevelt told delegates from 25 colleges: "All we have done so far is to frighten the wits out of the American people ... I contend that faculties and presidents know their people better than anyone else and are better able to judge whether men and women are unfit to teach."

Calmest comment came from the White House. Said President Eisenhower: he had always insisted that all philosophies of government be presented fairly, but he would not be a party to any program where there was a card-carrying Communist in such a responsible position as teaching our youngsters, because it is teaching and preaching, as opposed to teaching facts. Did Ike think a Communist could contaminate such non-controversial subjects as mathematics or calculus? Easily, said the President. He was reminded of a Nazi textbook that had been permeated with politics. The simplest problems had been set up to conform to Nazi doctrine: "If there are so many Sudenten Germans in Czechoslovakia who actually belong to Mr. Hitler ..." Here even elementary arithmetic had been colored with politics.

As for the conduct of investigating committees, Ike said that moral and constitutional values must be preserved. But he made it clear that he was not about to try to clamp down on congressional investigative power.

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