Four Faculty Members Sign Attack On HUAC---'Threatens Democracy'

Four Harvard Faculty members signed a strongly-worded attack on the House Un-American Activities Committee which ran in yesterday's New York Times.

Listed as sponsors of a full-page advertisement asking the House to abolish HUAC were Rupert Emerson, professor of Government; Reinhold Niebuhr, visiting professor of Theology; Perry G. E. Miller, Powell M. Cabot Professor of American Literature; and Kenneth S. Lynn, associate professor of English.

HUAC Impedes Integration

The advertisement charged that HUAC's activities "threaten democracy" by "introducing the alien concept of a political test into our public life." The Committee also impedes integration "by equating the struggle for civil rights with subversion" and encourages "the political extremists among us who stand for antidemocratic means and ends," the advertisement said.

Calling HUAC an "engine of oppression," the advertisement defended Lloyd Barenblatt, Chandler Davis, Frank Wilkinson, and Carl Braden, who have served jail sentences "for defying the HUAC's inquiry into their personal beliefs and associations." "Thirty-five others are threatened with imprisonment for this same political crime," the statement continued.

HUAC "threatens the national security," the advertisement claimed, "by diverting attention and energy from the critical world situation to the miniscule domestic communist movement." It also charged HUAC with "encouraging corrosive mutual suspicion," "dividing the nation, setting neighbor against neighbor, and depriving the nation of the benefits of free discussion."

In the international sphere, the advertisement contended, the Committee "creates doubt among the peoples of the world who look to us for a living example of the values of freedom."

Finally, the signers called upon the House of Representatives to abolish the HUAC "because no one else will." It noted that privately many Congressmen have said HUAC is "unnecessary, harmful, and, at times, downright silly" but that "publicly, only a handful have opposed the Committee."