No Red Barnes

Last Tuesday, one of the more insidious news items of recent times slipped into the press and lay quietly in small print amid the flurry and bombast of election returns. The gist was this; State Attorney Clarence a. Barnes had filed a bill which would prevent all Massachusetts schools, private or public, from employing as teachers Communists and "others who advocate the overthrow of government by force or violence."

It is deceptively simple to poke fun at Barnes' announcement. Any man who piously asserts his "considered opinion" to be that the "re-establishment of the Comintern . . . and its increased efforts within this country have created a situation fraught with danger to the Commonwealth" is making himself a broad target for board witticisms. But to laugh off Barnes' who successfully sponsored a highly restrictive labor bill last fall, is to ignore a man capable of exerting considerable influence to ends that actually are fraught with danger.

The danger of Barnes' proposed bill to freedom of expression in the teaching profession needs no elaboration. Less obvious is the danger that the bill will meet violent, but undefined opposition. In Sunday's New York Times Magazine, Associate Professor Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. suggested that the first constructive step towards combatting witch hunts while preserving security would be to differentiate "between the rights of an American citizen and the rights of a government employe in a security agency." To make the teaching profession seem to bear a vital relationship to government security would be a small task for experienced red-baiters. If it is to be effective, opposition to the Barnes bill must straightjacket this sort of political sleight-of-hand.

It must emphasize that a teacher is primarily a private citizen, not a government employe. Consequently, as Schlesinger declares, he "must be protected in his right to think and speak freely--as a Communist, a Fascist, or whatever he wants."