YRC Backs Pusey In His Answer to McCarthy Charge

In a special meeting held late last week, the Young Republicans unanimously endorsed President Pusey's reply to Senator McCarthy's charge that the University harbored Communists.

Previously, the HYRC had refused to join other groups, members of the Student Council's Committee of Undergraduate Organizations on Academic Freedom, in endorsing Pusey's statement.

At a meeting of the committee held last Tuesday, the HYRC representative asked the group to endorse Pusey's entire statement, including a section deploring the use of the Fifth Amendment to avoid testifying. But because agreement could not be reached among the member groups of the committee, the blanket endorsement was not given.

According to Moore, the HYRC supported statements made by Pusey and the Corporation on three points on which the other members of the committee would not agree: 1) Communism is ipso facto unfit to teach. 2) A Congressional Committee has the right to investigate an educational institution so long as its investigation is conducted on the principles of justice and consideration for the individual. 3) Anyone who uses the Fifth Amendment to keep from testifying should be carefully scrutinized.

Committee Condemned

In a second resolution last Thursday, the HYRC unanimously condemned the Committee and its chairman, Anthony C. Bellenson '54, for "representing its statement as a support of Pusey when actually it was not."

According to HYRC president Roger A. Moore '53, the Committee's statement was "a confused, highly ambiguous statement of what Pusey said liberally spiced with what he did not say."

Moore referred to the sentence in the Committee's statement which read: "We believe that they (the President and Corporation ) will preserve an atmosphere in which the right of a teacher to retain his position will not be questioned as long as he does not act unlawfully or immorally or does not use his position to distort facts or to insist upon the acceptance of his own beliefs as the only possible truths." Moore said he felt that these criteria would allow a person to use the Fifth Amendment to avoid testimony.

Beilenson's committee, however, deleted this sentence and others from a final statement made earlier last week. Moore said that the HYRC "still would not dignify the statement with its endorsement."