OATH BILL HIT BY MORISON ON BASIS OF PAST EXAMPLES

Consure of a Harvard President for his stand on infant baptism, two attempts at forcing oath bills on the University, and a wartime cry from alumni to dismiss certain German facultymen were among incidents in Harvard's past mentioned by Samuel E. Morison '08, Historian of the Tercentenary and professor of History, addressing last night's anniversary celebration in Sanders Theatre.

A plea for academic freedom based on the folly of attempts to restrict the liberty of the faculty in the past concluded Morison's address, entitled "Three Centuries of Harvard." He spoke at a meeting commemorating the 299th anniversary of the University's founding and the 328th anniversary of John Harvard's birth.

President Conant presided over the ceremonies, while the Glee Club rendered four selections. Between eight and nine o'clock the program was carried to the nation over NBC's "Red" network.

As preface to his discussion of Harvard's freedom in the past, Morison explained the liberal tradition held by the University's founders:

"Harvard was founded by Puritans whose consciences had been troubled by the oaths to support the state religion that they had to take at Oxford or Cambridge. . . . Personal experience taught them the vanity of trying to control opinion by tests and oaths; and they made no such attempts here."

Morison then related past incidents when the University's freedom of expression has been questioned.

"Henry Dunster, our first president, was pulled up short when he opposed infant baptism. The Governing Boards wished him to continue regardless; but the General Court forced him to resign.

"Oxford and Cambridge, less fortunate, had a stringent set of Tests and Oaths imposed on them by Charles II. The consequence was that . . . college fellows and tutors found that the safe way to hold their places was to renounce all liberty of writing, speech, or thought; and both universities became for a long period contemptible as places of learning.

"Another oath bill for Harvard was threatened in the 1740's as a punishment for Harvard indifference toward the evangelical revival, but it failed to pass. The Harvard Presidents, when Massachusetts was a Royal Province, were charged at their inauguration by the Royal Governor to preside 'with loyalty to our Sovereign Lord King George, and obedience to his laws.'

Free Speech Essential to Democracy

"Free speech was regarded as an axiom of democracy, and the guardian of liberty. But the Great War brought back that fierce spirit of intolerance that Thomas Jefferson had hoped to bury forever. It took the form of demands for the dismissal of certain professors, either because they had the misfortune to be Germans, or because they spoke or wrote in a manner to alarm property. And these demands--to their shame let it be said--came most sharply from our own alumni; from men who had benefitted from the very freedom that they sought to restrain.