Sears, State Bar Chairman, Asks Griswold Fire Lubells

The President of the Massachusetts Bar Association yesterday asked Dean Griswold of the Law School to expel Jonathan W. and David L. Lubell 2L for refusing to answer question before Senator Jenner's investigating Committee.

Samuel P. Sears '17, in an open letter to Griswold, said:

"The eyes of the world are on the Harvard Law School at this moment. You, as its Dean, are faced with a problem of grave and far reaching import, but one which nevertheless requires immediate courageous and decisive action.

"I refer, of course, to the problem of the Lubell brothers, who by their defiant refusal to answer questions asked them by a properly constituted legislative investigating committee, and their invocation of the Fifth Amendment of the Constitution as the basis for that refusal, have proven themselves unfit for admission to the bar of any of our states, and, of course, unfit to continue as student at the Harvard Law School."

On the evidence of their statements, he said, "one is obliged to conclude that either they are members (of the Communist Party), and so require the protection of the privilege they have claimed, or they have testified falsely.

"In either case, they have, it seems to me, clearly disqualified themselves from further membership in your student body."

Sears stated he felt it was his duty as an alumnus to ask Griswold to take "firm, prompt, public action . . . if the Law School is to retain the position it has established over the years."

In his letter, Sears also referred at length to last week's statement by the Association of American Universities and also to an address last month of John Sloan Dickey, President of Dartmouth.

The Lubells were unavailable for comment last night.

The Law School faculty has postponed action on the Lubells. After a lengthy discussion last Tuesday, the matter was tabled. A two thirds vote of the faculty is necessary for expulsion.

Two years ago a dispute started when Sears objected to Osmond K. Frankael '08, vice-president of the Lawyer's Guild, speaking at the Law School. Sears pointed to a report of the House Un-American Affairs Committee which called the Guild "the foremost bulwark of the Communist party."

Last fall he tried to start a pro-McCarthy fund drive to aid the election of the Senator. At that time three Harvard professors were soliciting funds for McCarthy's defeat.