Jerome, Davis, Teachers Union President, Raps Conant Policy

In a strong letter of protest to President Conant, Jerome Davis, president of the American Federation of Teachers, yesterday hit the Corporation for partial action in the Walsh-Sweezy dismissal.

Believing it would "increase the distrust now held by many" concerning the impartiality of the attitude a taken by college corporations in academic cases, Davis expressed the hope that Harvard might find some way to right the "great wrong" done to Drs. Walsh and Sweezy.

Last year Davis was ousted from the Yale Theological School, where he was an instructor, allegedly for his political views. At the time ex-President Angell of Yale received much condemnation from liberals and liberal publications over the country.

In his letter Davis thought the public would interpret the refusal of the Corporation to reinstate the dismissed Economics instructors as "one further evidence of the failure of corporations to understand or act in accordance with sound educational procedure."

He also referred to Richard Whitney, whose name, he said, "still stands in the Harvard University catalogue . . . although he is now occupying a cell in Sing Sing."

Coinciding with the attack by the A.F. of T., in which both Walsh and Sweezy once held office, was the blast yesterday by the Cambridge Union of University Teachers, which called President Conant's letter to the Board of Overseers an inadequate answer and the Corporation's failure to act a threat to "Harvard's liberalism."

The statement said: "The Union believes that the central issue--that two promising academic careers have, in effect, been terminated--has not been squarely met. The Union therefore emphatically supports the recommendation of the Committee."

"If the Committee's inquiry," it continued, "promises to re-establish the reality of Harvard's liberalism, then the Corporation's failure to act threatens to convert it once more into a myth. Striking at the Corporation, it concluded: "Is the last word to the that which was spoken by Emerson in 1861--'Harvard College has no voice in Harvard College, but State Street votes it down on every ballot'?"