The Witnesses

In spite of rising outcries against their methods and doubts about their authority, the congressional investigators of U.S. education had no intention of closing down for alterations. Last week they were open for business as usual--and business was booming.

Dr. Bella Dodd, the former Hunter College political scientist who was once a member of the U.S. Communist Party's national committee, gave Senator Jenner's subcommittee plenty to consider. She repeated her old charge that in the '40s there were about 1,500 Communist teachers in the nation's schools, also insisted that Communists had even wormed their way into the offices of the New York State Department of Education and the New York City Board of Education. New York officials contradicted her. "I would say without reservation," wired Education Commissioner Lewis A. Wilson, "we have never had anyone in our department who was known to be connected with the Communist Party."

President Gideonse. The Senators got some additional encouragement from another New Yorker: President Harry D. Gideonse of Brooklyn College, a famed liberal. Back in 1939, said he, the college was "sharply infiltrated" with Communists. But now the Communists are "on the run." Said Gideonse: Brooklyn recently dismissed six faculty members for refusing to answer the subcommittee's questions. A seventh resigned before testifying.

Physicist Darling. The Brooklynites were not the only casualties announced last week. Another was Physicist Bryon T. Darling of Ohio State, who appeared before the House Un-American Activities Committee. Though he is now working on a special U.S. Air Force project, Darling flatly refused to say whether or not he is or ever was a Communist. He also refused to answer such questions as whether or not he had access to classified information, whether he had ever belonged to the Midtown Club of the Communist Party in Detroit, or whether he knew of any Communist cell now operating at Ohio State. "I have," said the professor later, "never done and shall never do anything disloyal and against the interests of my country." Ohio State's President Howard L. Bevis announced that Darling would be suspended until the university had a chance to make a "complete study" of the committee's transcript.

Douglas' Ex. On the same day, the committee began questioning Mrs. Dorothy W. Douglas, 63, onetime (1915-30) wife of Illinois' Senator Paul Douglas and a onetime teacher at Smith College. Though Mrs. Douglas had been named by Smith Professor Robert Gorham Davis (TIME, March 9) as having been a Communist in 1938 and 1939, she too took refuge behind the Fifth Amendment.

Mathematics Teacher. Senator McCarthy's committee was investigating the Voice of America, but among its witnesses was Czech-born Julius H. Hlavaty, the present chairman of the mathematics department at the Bronx High School of Science. Dr. Hlavaty was testifying because he had delivered a broadcast for the Voice in 1949. At that time, said he, he was not a Communist, nor is he one today. But was he one in 1948? And had he tried to recruit students to the party in that year? Teacher Hlavaty refused to answer.

Apparently Hlavaty knew what was in store for him: according to the New York City charter, he would automatically be dismissed for refusing to answer the committee. Said he: "I am distressed today by what is happening to me . . . I have a reputation from New York to California as a teacher of mathematics. Three weeks from today I am supposed to teach a model lesson at a national conference of mathematics teachers . . . What is happening here today means, if not actually, potentially the end of a career which I think in all modesty I can say was a distinguished career in education."

Commented Senator Stuart Symington: "You are the most confused witness we have ever had."

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