S.M.U. Professor Accused by Board Of Anti-Semitism

The board of trustees of Southern Methodist University in Dallas, Texas, voted in May to reprimand an S.M.U. English professor who has been waging a one-man public campaign of anti-Semitism for the past several years.

John Owen Beaty, head of the S.M.U. English department and a member of the faculty for 34 years, had charged that the University was being taken over by what he called "powerful, non-Christian elements in our population." In a pamphlet entitled "How to Capture a University," Beaty had asked, "Are the minds of our students to be guided by B'nal Writh... or by Soviet Moscow... or by assorted devotees of the little world power which usurps the name of 'Israel'?"

The facts "do not bear out the allegations made by Dr. Beaty," said the trustees' statement, which followed a near-unanimous vote of condemnation by the S.M.U. faculty. The President of the University, Umphrey Lee, an ordained Methodist minister, had also denounced Beaty's charges.

Beaty's career of public anti-Semitism began in 1951 with the publication of his book The Iron Curtain over America, hailed by Gerald L.K. Smith as "the greatest of its kind over to appear in print." According to a student at the University, Beaty's English courses consist chiefly of "reference after reference... made in a slurring manner against members of the Jewish faith."

Despite the recent attacks upon his conduct, Beaty appears unchastened and unreconciled. Charges of anti-Semitism are always hurled against "genuine anti-Communists," he claims and concludes, "I have no feelings except feelings of friendship for pro-American Jews."

Beaty's constant anti-Semitism has received new impetus during the current McCarthyist wave of anti-Communism..