Flunked: Political Science

By most of the yardsticks used to measure the performance of college presidents, Quigg Newton has done an admirable job during his six years at the University of Colorado. Faculty salaries have risen 70% during that span, expenditure per student 90%, graduate enrollment 100%, library spending 160%. But when confronted with a campus crisis involving strong political feelings, President Newton, former Democratic mayor of Denver, flunked political science.

Last winter campus conservatives invited Arizona's Republican Senator Barry Goldwater to speak at the university; campus liberals got indignant, and a raucous row blew up. Echoes from that battle were still lingering this fall when a wild and woolly student called Goldwater a "murderer" in an article in the campus newspaper. Admirers of Goldwater protested, and so did a lot of other citizens.

Showing what seemed to many to be a confusion between freedom to speak and license to libel, Newton failed to act decisively. By the time he got around to removing the student editor for irresponsibility, it was too late to erase an impression that the president did not think the attack on Goldwater was anything to make a fuss about. On Election Day came the reckoning: riled-up voters elected two outspoken Newton-must-go Republicans to the university's board of regents. Last week, with the election results ringing in his ears, Newton announced his resignation, effective next June.

In these days of foundations, there is a place for almost any prominent exile from the groves of Academe. Newton's haven: the presidency of Manhattan's Commonwealth Fund, a charitable foundation with assets of $120 million.

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