Witch Hunt

THE legislature's Joint Committee on Education Tuesday foolishly voted 7-5 for a measure that will almost certainly restrict academic freedom at the University of Massachusetts. Responding to charges that instructors at the Boston campus had encouraged students to participate in last October's Arlington Street Church rally against the war, the Committee supported a plan to set up an investigative commission.

The impropriety of legislative forays into the classroom and the fruitlessness of such an ex post facto inquiry are compelling reasons for the legislature to ignore approval of the measure by the Education Committee. Furthermore, the moral and legal problems involved in draft resistance are still far from solution, and the implicit condemnation of anti-war activity made in setting up this commission is biased and premature.

Certainly UMass is not the only campus where faculty members have supported or even encouraged civil disobedience. The singling out of instructors at this campus for intimidation, justified by the Committee on grounds that UMass is a public institution, forbids them freedoms allowed their colleagues at private campuses. Such discrimination can only discourage teachers considering UMass and ultimately will hurt the calibre of its faculty. Those students who cannot afford to attend private universities are being dealt educations inferior to those students who can.

The university is not the province of the legislature. If instructors misuse university facilities, it is a matter only the Faculty Senate should take up.