Ivy League Protests Anti-Subversive Oath

Members of the Ivy League and six other Eastern schools have recently registered opposition to the anti-subversion provision of the National Defense Education Act. The regulation in question would require all recipients of federal stipends under the act to disclaim in writing any belief in "subversive movements."

In a letter to Arthur S. Flemming, Secretary of Health, Education, and Welfare, A. Whitney Griswold, President of Yale University, commended Flemming's Dec. 15 statement against the measure. Other Ivy League presidents, including President Pusey, dispatched similar notes to the Secretary.

Griswold's letter presented four chief reasons for discarding the controversial provision. First, he recalled instances when educational processes have "been distorted and disrupted by forces operating under the shelter of test oaths."

In the second place, he continued, these pledges do little to deter real transgressors, offering them instead "a convenient cloak. Thirdly, "it is our conviction that belief cannot be coerced or compelled," he went on.

"Oaths and affidavits of this sort are especially distasteful when they are required of young people who are just entering upon the most important phase of their educational experience," since they represent a "lack of confidence," Griswold concluded.

Six more institutions--Bryn Mawr, Haverford, Swarthmore, Bates, Bowdoin, and Colby--also have attacked the non-subversive pledge. Bryn Mawr and Haverford authorities felt so strongly about the measure that they refused to take part in the act's loan program.

Seymour E. Harris '20, president of the local chapter of the American Association of University Professors, the group that first opposed the loyalty oath requirement, reiterated the AAUP's dislike of the proposal, but he thought that the University would "probably take the money."