Academic Freedom: Again

One day last week over 3000 students of Queens College boycotted classes. Earlier this month similar walk-outs were staged by 1400 students at Hunter and Bronx Colleges. The demonstrations were part of a controversy over what the New York Times has called "the student's freedom to listen and learn."

The City University of New York recognizes no such freedom. In the last month Hunter College has made public a decision to refuse to rent its auditorium to the arch-conservative National Review; Queens College has vetoed student invitations to Black Muslim leader Malcolm X and to Benjamin J. Davis, secretary of the U.S. Communist Party; and Brooklyn College has put off a scheduled speech by State Assemblyman Mark Lane, because he had been arrested as a Freedom Rider in Mississippi.

The most celebrated of the unwelcome speakers has been Mr. Davis, the communist. For in his case, administration officials did not merely cancel an individual speech but tried to justify their action in broad legal terms. It would be a felony, the Administrative Council of the City University of New York declared, to allow an avowed Communist to speak on the campus of a city college.

The reasoning with which Council lawyers support this conclusion is ingenious, but it can hardly be considered the final word until other legal interpretations have been examined. Yet thus far, the Administrative Council has not considered briefs (such as that of the American Civil Liberties Union) opposing its own legal rationale. It prefers to act as lawyer, judge, and jury, and faculty protests and student walk-outs have not yet made it change its mind.

(Meanwhile, Mr. Davis reports that he has been deluged with requests to appear on radio, television, and to speak at colleges all over the country. "The publicity I have received," he says, "couldn't be bought for all the gold in Moscow.")

The furor in New York has hardly been noticed in Harvard. No faculty members have placed ads in the New York Times or circulated petitions of protest among their colleagues. Perhaps they have been too busy worrying about their research, their students, Cubs or bomb shelters to take an active part in an academic freedom controversy. Or perhaps, having observed the indifference with which Black Muslim, Communist, and National Review speakers have been received at Harvard, they dont think the issue is worth the trouble.

Whatever the reasons, lack of faculty action in the New York controversy is lamentable, not merely because Harvard's independence gives its faculty members certain obligations, but because the New York issue is one in which a letter from Cambridge might have some effect. University officials in New York are more apt to be swayed by opinion coming from within the academic profession than is the President in Washington.

Some expression of protest against the arbitrary decisions of the Administrative Council of the City University should have come from Harvard. Since none has, the editors of the CRIMSON have taken an unusual step: they have by personal contributions paid for a full-page advertisement in the Queens College student paper, the Phoenix. The ad, which protests the action against Davis, runs today.

The CRIMSON has no illusions that its advertisement will bring any Qceens College official to his knees. It has acted primarily to emphasize to Harvard--not Queens--that universities are responsible one for another. Violations of academic freedom endanger all communities of teachers and students. Our interests are at stake.