Councilman Hits YRC Stand On Endorsing Pusey's Action

The chairman of the Student Council's Committee of Undergraduate Organizations on Academic Freedom charged yesterday that reasons given by the president of the Young Republicans for his club's failure to back President Pusey's stand on MyCarthyism are "entirely without basis in fact."

Roger A. Moore '53, the HYRC head, said Tuesday that his organization did not join other undergraduate groups in endorsing Pusey's stand because the Council Committee "violated a policy made last year when it was formed that it would never use its own name in its actions." Moore said that the character of various groups comprising the committee's membership would make it seem ineffectual.

Anthony C. Beilenson '54, the Committee's chairman, directly contradicted Moore yesterday. "The Council, when it established the Committee last spring, specified that it should 'issue statements under its name,'" Beilenson said.

Terming Moore's exeplanation unsatisfactory, Beilenson demanded that the HYRC explain why it has changed its position since last spring, when it agreed to work with the Committee.

The Committee head called "absurd" Moore's statement that the HYRC did not lend its support after the Council issued the statement last Monday night because it had no time to consider such a step.

Beilenson said, "The HYRC's planning committee spent almost its entire meeting last Monday afternoon doing nothing but considering endorsement of the statement."

"At that meeting Moore read to the planning committee a letter that I had sent him the previous Thursday expressing my disappointment that the HYRC was evidently not going to back the statement and urging him to reconsider his refusal," Beilenson said.

Beilenson pointed out that the Council Committee, in wording its statement, had "carefully limited itself to supporting Pusey's handling of McCarthy's recent charges of communism at Harvard, and avoided going into the more general issues of the use of the Fifth Amendment, of Professor Furry, and of the desirability of Congressional investigations of colleges.

"Because the HYRC is a Harvard College organization and because the Committee dealt only with charges about Harvard, the HYRC should speak for its members on this purely local issue.