NDEA Crimes

The "statement of crimes" required by the National Defense Education Act needlessly singles out students as objects of suspicion and distrust. It demands that any undergraduate or graduate applying for NDEA money report convictions of all crimes and traffic violations punishable by more than a $25 fine. No other recipients of government largesse -- farmers or social security beneficiaries, for example -- are obligated to sign such a statement.

Although graduate school officials have focused their criticism so far primarily on the theoretical implications of the loyalty oath, it is this statement of crimes which could in practice prove the most damaging section of the act. Hundreds of students who have participated in civil rights activity in the South could be deprived of NDEA money at the whim of the government. The act doesn't specify that officials must deny funds to students who have been convicted of such crimes; but it provides ready justification for any future bureaucrat who is so inclined.

There is really no sound reason for requiring the statement, and none was given by the legislators who introduced it. The original legislation, passed in 1958, obligated students to sign a disclaimer, swearing that they didn't believe in or belong to any organization which advocated overthrowing the government, in addition to the loyalty oath. Harvard helped lead the fight against the disclaimer--losing about three million dollars in the process when it refused to accept money on these terms. And in 1962, the nation's universities finally persuaded Judge Howard Smith, then the courtly autocrat of the House Rules Committee, to remove the disclaimer. But in Smith's maneuver on the floor of the House the statement of crimes was smuggled into the bill, and the loyalty oath was preserved.

This portion of the act, an ugly monument to Congressional suspicion of scholarship, should follow the way of the disclaimer. Requiring young people whose education is supposed to be vital to the national defense to prove they are law-abiding and loyal can only lead to mutual distrust. If the government can't demonstrate some faith in students, they are not likely to show much confidence in return.