Burgum Fired At N.Y.U. For Not Speaking

New York University recently ousted Edwin Berry Burgum, associate professor of English, as "unfit to teach because of conduct unbecoming a teacher." This action followed the professor's refusal to state before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee whether he had ever been a member of the Communist Party.

Among others also dismissed in the New York area, in the wake of Congressional investigation were Dr. Clarence Hiskey of Brooklyn Polytechnic Institute, Dr. Gene Weltfish of Columbia University, and 12 faculty members from four municipal colleges, Brooklyn, Queens, Hunter, and City.

In September 1952 when Burgum received a subpoena to appear before the Senate Subcommittee he conferred with his department chairman. Although urged to answer all questions frankly, he indicated at that time that he probably would not answer questions concerning his relationship to the Communist Party.

Thus in October Burgum invoked the Fifth Amendment in refusing to answer 15 questions about alleged Communist activity.

Heald Suspends

Shortly thereafter Chancellor Henry T. Heald suspended Burgum saying in part, "Refusal of a teacher to state whether he is or has been a member of the Communist Party, when questions on this subject are raised by such a legislative committee, is a breach of his duty to the government and to the University."

After Bergum formally requested a hearing on his suspension, Dean Thomas C. Pollack recommended that he be fired because (1) although he had a legal right to dodge questions under Fifth Amendment protection, "he violated an obligation of a member of the teaching profession who has the privileges of academic freedom," and (2) he refused to talk openly not because of his stated desire to uphold freedom of speech, but because he feared "testifying to acts which would reveal the truth concerning the relation of himself and others to the Communist Party and subject him to criminal prosecution."

The question was referred to a faculty committee for review and report. There were 11 three-hour sessions at which the stenographic record ran to 984 pages. At the hearing testimony was advanced tracing the Party or Red-front activity of Burgum over the past 20 years.

Manning Johnson, a former Communist, and Herbert A. Philbrick, one-time undercover agent for the FBI, both identified Burgum as a Commie.

Some of his recent activities which the committee heard about were:

He asked in 1949 for the suspension of the trials of the 12 top Communists. He solicited funds for the Civil Rights Congress which put up $50,000 bail for Gerhardt Eisler and financed the defense on the now convicted top Reds. He asked in 1951 for money to finance cargoes of supplies to send to Communist China. He solicited funds in 1952 for defense of the now convicted "second string" Communists. In all, 62 exhibits were presented to show that Burgum's "conduct coincided with the path of the Communist Party" during the past 20 years.

Two Reasons

Before the Senate Subcommittee Burgum had given two reasons for refusing to testify: (1) his desire to uphold truth and freedom of speech, and (2) his right not to have to testify against himself. During the hearing before the faculty committee, he declared that he should not be required to answer any of the charges made against him and insisted that no inferences could be made from his refusal.

Burgum stressed that the charges were so drawn as to be unsusceptible of defense, that the evidence was irrelevant, that some of the witnesses were "a trop of paid informers." He generally defied the faculty committee.

The committee refused the first charge of Dean Pollock but sustained the second. No teacher should be denied the legal protection accorded to all citizens under the Fifth Amendment, the committee opined, "but whereas the University has a civic duty to the free society of which it is an institutional part and whereas a member of the teaching profession in our society may be expected so to conduct himself that his activities meet the tests of responsible exercises of his rights of academic freedom, both in the classroom and elsewhere, the Committee finds that the second charge is sustained."

In April the University Council met and voted to dismiss Burgum from the faculty of the University.