Capacity Crowd Jeers, Applauds Debate Over Faculty Communists

A near capacity crowd that alternately hissed, shouted, and applauded filled Emerson D last night for what the Harvard Eisenhower Club billed as "the debate of the century." The head of the Massachusetts Communist Party and an "evangelical Baptist" who is executive director of the Christian Anti-Communism Crusade debated the question, "Resolved: That Communists should be expelled from our university faculties." Speaking for the affirmative, Dr. Fred C. Schwarz, a surgeon and psychiatrist from Sydney, Australia, limited his argument to "members of the Communist Party" and contended they should be excluded from faculties both for "their relationship toward truth" and for the program which Party members are dedicated to carry out.

After quoting several Communist writers, who referred to "international struggle" and "the dictatorship of the proletariat," Schwarz concluded that "a man who has renounced his conscience has no place on the faculty of a free university." He then cited numerous purge actions in the U.S.S.R., adding that the only thing that prevented Stalin from completing a purge in the Ukraine was a shortage of box cars.

Otis A. Hood, chairman of the Communist Party of Massachusetts, centered his opening argument around the necessity of providing the best possible university faculty. "Teachers may be competent in their field despite conflicting philosophies, religion, or economic situations," he emphosized. By excluding professors on the basis of their private philosophies, he said, "you are opening up a road where, instead of education, you have indoctrination." Citing Soviet scientific accomplishments, he mentioned that "a lot of Communists teach on faculties in the Soviet Union."

After Hood had devoted his rebuttal almost exclusively to considerations of alleged Communist brutality and to warnings of "McCarthyism" in this country, Schwarz accused his opponent of relying on "paranoic argument" and pointed out that Hood had dodged the question by not once mentioning the Communist Party in the United States and its aims.

Later, in answer to a specific question on the purge of certain Communist leaders, Hood speculated that Western agents might have planted some of the evidence that led to Stalin's action. "You don't know how they work," he said.