Grad on Struik

To the Editors of the Harvard CRIMSON:

I read with great interest in your issue of 5 December the account of a group of professors, who were forming for the defense of Professor Struik of M.I.T., now under indictment, charged with subversive activities. I note that they are acting in defense of "academic freedom." Academic freedom, which is part of the larger freedom guaranteed by the Constitution, is a precious right and should be jealously guarded as such. It appears, however, that there is considerable confusion of thought in academic circles as to just what this and all other freedoms really are. Freedom is a precious right, but it is not an unlimited right and it ends where license commences. It is the duty of the authorities to guard jealously that freedom of thought and speech given us by the Constitution but also to repress with equal vigor the license, which seeks to destroy that Constitution, upon which all freedoms depend, and to replace it with slavery and chaos.

I am not sufficiently familiar with the activities of Professor Struik to pass judgement upon them, but it would seem that there must be some evidence that he has transgressed beyond the bounds of free speech into the realms of license or he would not have been indicted. This is a matter for the Courts to decide, without being hampered by hysterical outcries.

As I look over the group of "academic gentlemen," now so disturbed lest "academic freedom" be endangered, I note some who have not been very conspicuous in the defense of Constitutional Government upon which that freedom depends, but who have shown considerable sympathy with those ideologies, which, if they succeed in destroying Constitutional Government will immediately abolish, as has been amply demonstrated by their actions is those countries, where they have got the upper hand, all freedom, including academic freedom. G. Andrews Morlarty '06