Wallace at Yale

The action of Kingman Brewster, Jr., Acting President of Yale, passes understanding. After the Yale Political Union, a student debating society, invited Governor Wallace of Alabama to speak at Yale during his tour of the North, Brewster warned that Wallace's presence at Yale would strain dangerously relations with New Haven's Negro community and might cause violence. As a result the YPU withdrew its invitation.

Unless Brewster was threatened directly by the Negro community of New Haven, his fears were unfounded. Governor Barnett's peroration in Sanders Theatre last spring was the occasion of no more than orderly picketing by civil rights groups and a polite hearing by an integrated audience. Surely Yale is not so much less sophisticated than Harvard that it cannot greet a detestable man with civility.

Brewster claimed to have warned the YPU before he knew that Mayor Richard Lee of New Haven officially rebuffed Wallace. Hence if Brewster did receive threats of violence, it is astonishing that he did not feel he could rely on the City of New Haven to vitiate them.

In either case, an airing of Wallace's views in the Yale atmosphere might educate Wallace and stimulate the University. Now that another group of students, led by members of the Yale Daily News, is trying again to arrange for a visit by Wallace, Brewster has a chance to learn from his students and offer them every encouragement. The Yale motto, with which Brewster may be familiar, is "Lux et Veritas"; it is given to no president to suppress either.