McCarthy: Put Up or Shut Up

One of the reasons given in yesterday's editorial for a bill to compel testimony before Congressional committees was this: as long as witnesses kept the real extent of Communist infiltration indistinct through use of the Fifth Amendment, such infiltration could be magnified by cheap politicians. The latest McCarthy-Furry affair is a timely example. McCarthy stated, that, in closed hearings, Furry refused to testify about radar espionage and indoctrination of students. With this as a springboard, he could call the University "a smelly mess," where members of the Communist Party are currently on the faculty, feeding students "Communist philosophy."

This is one of the gravest charges anyone could level against a university. If true, it means that an educational institution is tolerating a dangerous perversion of education. It means that in the name of academic freedom, Harvard permits as members of its faculty, men who are held in academic slavery by a menacing totalitarian ideology. No wonder his charges, broadcast as they were through a nationwide press, have damaged the University's prestige and could cause concern among parents whose children are, or want to be, students here.

But because of its very gravity, McCarthy's charge, if false, becomes perhaps the most irresponsible untruth he has ever spoken. And until he can show there is a member of the Faculty who is a Communist (he has never said Furry is one), his charge is wholly unacceptable.

This is so, because according to every other indication, there is no Communist on the Faculty. If the Senator refers to Wendell Furry, he is belied by Furry's sworn statement, which he repeated before McCarthy, that he has not been a Communist for at least two years. If Furry is the source of "Communist philosophy," then McCarthy's charge is contrary to the Corporation's statement that Furry "has at no time let his affiliation with the Party influence his teaching nor has he otherwise tried to influence the political thinking of his students." It is much easier to believe a group of prominent lawyers who carefully studied Furry's actions and questioned his students and colleagues for four months, than a Senator with a reputation for shotgun charges, who asked Furry questions for thirty minutes.

If McCarthy refers instead to Professor Markham and Mr. Kamin, the same conflict of opinion occurs. Again, it is easier to believe the Corporation, since Professor Markham has been suspended from teaching although the Corporation neither believed she was a party member nor exposed her students to "Communist philosophy."

Who then, are McCarthy's Communist teachers at Harvard? President Conant, in his last annual report, said he knew of no Communist party member at Harvard. Nor, presumably, has the Corporation, for it has said it would, "in the absence of extraordinary circumstances," fire any Communist it could find. Neither the editors of this newspaper, nor any other students they know, have, in their years at the University, encountered any Faculty member who acted as if he were under Communist domination. Nor have we, as McCarthy has charged, ever been exposed to indoctrination with the Communist party line.

In all humility, we believe the President, the Corporation and the students of Harvard are better able to judge whether there is a Communist on the Faculty, or whether there are other evidences of a "smelly mess" than is McCarthy.

It is therefore incumbent upon the Senator actually to name the professor or professors who are Communists, and to whom Harvard students are exposed. Unless he can do so, he will be admitting to the nation that he has consciously slandered a University which is contributing at least as much to the world's fight against Communism as McCarthy himself.