HRLU Committee Plans Measures To Urge Opposition Against HUAC

The Harvard-Radcliffe Liberal Union is preparing to mobilize University support for an upcoming nation-wide campaign to abolish the House Committee on American Activities. Reports, still unconfirmed, that the HUAC will conduct hearings in Boston this spring have spurred their action.

Leon I. Jacobson '63, president of the HRLU and chairman of the Union's Civil Liberties Committee, said yesterday that his committee was organized after Burton White leader of the San Francisco demonstrations against the HUAC in May, 1960, visited the University this fall. White is now chairman of the Bay Area Committee to Abolish the HUAC.

Jacobson said his committee is currently trying to locate local areas where the film "Operation Abolition" is being shown and where other "so-called anti-communist" information is being dispensed, in order to provide Liberal Union speakers for these programs.

The Civil Liberties Committee is also supplying speakers for local PTA groups to discuss right-wing influence and infiltration in local public school teaching.

Plans are being made to demonstrate support for persons recently jailed because of their refusal to cooperate with the HUAC investigations. The case of Pete Seeger, which will come before the Supreme Court some time in 1962, is exexpected to draw a large backing of liberal student groups throughout the country, Jacobson said.

The undergraduate committee is also preparing to demonstrate in Washington this spring, along with other groups, while Congress considers appropriations for the HUAC.

In preparation for the intensive nationwide campaign this spring, which will be organized by the Bay Area Committee, the Liberal Union is readying a week-long series of seminars and lectures. The Committee hopes to arrange a debate between Burton White and Fulton Lewis III, a member of the HUAC staff.

Last year the Liberal Union violently protested when the Department of Naval Science required NROTC students to attend showing of "Operation Abolition."