Dorgan Petitions Moscow to Give 'Unamerican' Hicks Job

Thomas Dorgan, chief proponent of the Teachers' Oath bill in the days when he was a member from Dorchester of the state legislature, has started a petition asking the University of Moscow to hire Granville Hicks, it was learned last night.

The former Solon, new "legislative agent" for the city of Boston, declared it was a "shame" and "kind of tough" that Russia was not going to take care of Hicks whom he described as having been "bodily fired from Harvard University."

Would Send Hicks To Russia

He boasted that he could get 10,000 persons to demand the Russian Fellowship for Hicks but said he would probably limit the number to 500. At first Dorgan made no mention of the petition, merely inquiring if the signers of the petition here urging Hicks' retention on the Faculty were American.

Later he mentioned his own effort in behalf of Hicks but when asked for the text he requested a few minutes' grace in which to find it "among my papers somewhere."

The petition which he finally produced, read as follows; "We, the under-signed do hereby petition, due to the fact that Granville Hicks has been bodily fired from Harvard University, to make arrangements for him to have a fellowship in the University of Moscow.

"We feel it a shame that an individual who has outstanding un-American qualities as Granville Hicks and also who has a wealth of knowledge of the Communist situation that it would be a catastrophe that his services would be lost to the Communist party.

"We also feel that he is highly regarded as the twentieth-century American teacher of Communism who is just another Charlie McCarthy on Stalin's knee."

Dorgan expressed pity for Hicks for having "got off on the wrong slant in spite of his ancestry of 300 years," and said he would send the petition when completed to the University of Moscow, adding, "that's his place over there."

Calling himself "a citizen of the newer races," he offered, as an afterthought, to participate in a round-table discussion with the signers of the petition asking Hicks' retention, with the latter and members of the Faculty present. Admission would be charged and the proceeds would be given to "the charities of the newer races."

He said he would prove that Harvard was doing right in "firing" the American Civilization counselor.