Colleges Bar 'Subversive,' Convicted Speakers

When four New York City colleges banned author Howard Fast from speaking on their premises in December, 1947, they touched off a dispute over who may speak when and where in New York universities, a dispute which even now is disturbing the Brooklyn College campus.

Fast was one of the 18 members of the Executive Board of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee who were convicted for contempt of Congress because they would not show their books and records to the House un-American Activities Committee.

On June 27, 1947, a Federal court convicted Fast and his 17 associates of contempt and sentenced them each to three months in jail and a $500 fine. The case was immediately appealed, and the 18 were released on bail.

Through what Columbia Provost Albert C. Jacobs called "administrative oversight," Fast was given permission to speak on the campus on October 4.

Two months later Provost Jacobs said Fast would not be allowed to make a scheduled speech before the P.C.A. on December 12. Columbia's policy, Jacobs said, was not to allow men under sentence or indictment to speak at the University.

Columbia Groups Protest

A large number of Columbia groups protested this decision. The P.C.A. called it a "complete break with the liberal traditions of American education," and noted that Professor Lyman Bradley, convicted with Fast for contempt, had been allowed to speak at Columbia in the summer of 1947.

The Columbia (daily) Spectator said, "The pressure of the un-American Activities Committee has already begun to take effect on the Columbia campus." The student council, Americans for Democratic Action, and the American Veterans Committee asked that the ban be revised.

A few days later Brooklyn College President Harry D. Gideonse banned Fast from a Karl Marx Society speech because of a college policy of "refusing permission to speak on the campus to any person whose conduct is under judicial consideration."

But at Brooklyn, as at Columbia, opponents of the ban were quick to point out that Lyman Bradley had given a speech several weeks before, under the auspices of two Brooklyn College groups.

Then Fast was stopped at City College. Dean John J. Theobald gave the same reasons presented by Columbia and Brooklyn.

Fast was not the only speaker banned at C.C.N.Y. On December 9, Theobald said "no" to a speech by Arnold Johnson, legislative representative of the Communist Party, because Johnson's party appeared on Attorney-General Clark's list of subversive organizations. The Student-Faculty Committee on Student Organizations upheld the ban. It said Johnson's speech would be "detrimental to the college," though it stated that Johnson could speak to any one group in a closed meeting.

There was a strong reaction here, too. City College students held a noon protest rally on December 11, and the daily Campus attacked the action in an editorial.

The American Civil Liberties Union stated, "No proper relation exists between the Attorney-General's blacklist, on which Mr. Johnson's exclusion was based, and the standards for selecting speakers to college groups."

Two days later, C.C.N.Y. violated its own rule, perhaps unconsciously. It permitted an official of the American Youth for Democracy to give a speech. The A.Y.D., like the Communist Party, is on the Attorney-General's "subversive" list.

Howard Fast finally found an entree, at the Washington Square College of New York University. Dean Thomas C. Pollock had his doubts, but he gave his approval.

But on the same day, December 12, Fast was refused twice more. The New York Board of Education refused to let him speak at the Midwood High School, across the street from Brooklyn College. And at Hunter College the Dean, over P.C.A. protests, turned Fast down. Both bans were based on Fast's legal status.

Fast tried again. He succeeded in obtaining permission to speak at the C. C. N. Y. night session, but 15 minutes before the speech, the night session dean called a halt. He had been unaware, he said, of college policy on convicted speakers.

No 'Subversives'

Policy at the municipal colleges apparently was fixed; no "subversives," and no men under "judicial consideration." Columbia, however, made a distinction. On December 15, it okayed a speech by Arnold Johnson before the Marxist Study Group. Provost Jacobs explained, "Any man who is not under sentence or under indictment can speak at Columbia."

Every this policy was soon revised. Soon after Fast had been banned, a Committee to Study Student Organizations was formed. On April 12, 1948, the University put this committee's report into effect. From then on, all doubtful cases were to be referred to a student council committee for a final decision, and furthermore, indictment was rejected as a formal criterion for permitting or rejecting speakers.

Over a year later, however, Columbia's administration took the powers back again. A few weeks ago, the student council approved a petition of the Marxist Group for a speech by Gus Hall, one of 11 Communists on trial for violating the Smith Act.

On May 3, Provost Jacobs wrote to the chairman of the administration's Committee on Student Organizations, "The university student council has clearly adopted as its policy the avoidance of responsibility for decision as to speakers ... I hereby return to the Committee on Student Organizations the power to decide whether suggested speakers are to be permitted to speak on the university campus."

Gus Hall Banned

Three days later, the administration committee unanimously prohibited the Gus Hall speech, "for the reason that to permit a person to speak while he is on trial would constitute an affront to the court."

The scheduled appearance of another one of the 11 Communist leaders produced another squall at Brooklyn College, which has not yet ended.

Last March, the Karl Marx Society at Brooklyn asked permission to held a campus meeting featuring Harry Winston. The Faculty-Student Committee on Student Activities vetoed this, because Winston currently is on trial in New York. The Marxist group was also warned that it could not sponsor the meeting off the campus, either.

But the meeting took place anyway, and Winston was there. The local Teachers' Union claimed the club was only trying to "challenge the legality of the ruling." The "challenge" was met, with immediate suspension for the Karl Marx club and its three executives.

Three days afterwards a protest meeting was held on the campus. It was unauthorized, however, so the college suspended the three students who "justigated and addressed it." The Vanguard, college daily, later charged that "at this same 'unauthorized' meeting, students who openly supported the suspension of K.M.S. and its leaders, spoke -- yet no similar action, no action at all, was taken against these people."

The three men were not reinsisted. On May 2, the A.V.C. chapter called a meeting "to work out united action to reinstate the three suspended students." Several clubs joined in a campaign for this purpose, and on May 12, they proclaimed, "All other conceivable measures of protest having failed, a class stoppage" should be held.

At the same time another grievance was created. Two students were summarily suspended for wearing academic robes and caps, gags in their mouths, and signs that read, "Are We Acceptable Now, Mr. G.?" ("Mr. G." was President Gideonse.)

A few days later the student council voted, 15 to 8, "that student council call upon all students, regardless of political leanings, to attend a rally--if necessary absenting themselves from classes."

The 15 affirmative voters signed a statement by one of their number: "The administration has time and again exerted undue influence on the activities of the student body in its right to protest the actions of the administration by suspending students with hardly any semblance of legality. As much as I deplore mob action ... I must take this way of voicing my disapproval."

Ten groups supported the rally: A.V.C., E. V. Debs Society, Harriet Tubman Society, Independent Socialist Club, Progressive Coalition Party, People's Songs, Philosophy Club, Hillel, Psychology Club, and the Young Progressives.

These groups listed their grievances. They included the suspension of the five students and increased power over student publications that the college had given faculty advisors.

The five member groups of the Democratic Coalition Committee agreed with the aims, but opposed the means. They said that the strike "would not solve a problem"; that it was called "undemocratically" without a college vote"; and that "a rally initiated by and held in conjunction with Y.P.A. and other Communist-dominated organizations results in a perversion of the aims and ideals of the rally."

One day before the scheduled strike, on May 19, faculty advisors to the A.V.C. and the Progressive Coalition Party resigned. The administration said that the A.V.C. advisor resigned "In protest against A.V.C.'s support of stoppage." But in a telegram to the Board of Higher Education, the local Teachers Union charged that these men "were called before the Dean of Students and requested to resign, thus preventing the existence of these clubs on campus, though no specific charges against the conduct of these clubs have been levelled."

Brooklyn's public relations director told the CRIMSON. "Teachers Union charges are without foundation." Other charges made by the rally supporters were answered one day before the strike in a formal statement by President Gideonse read to all classes.

Gideonse denied "censorship" of the College paper and said that "the faculty adviser ... is authorized to suspend a student from his position as a reporter if he does not observe good journalistic practice." He said that students had been disciplined only where "regulations were knowingly and deliberately broken." And he warned that the college would discipline student actions not in accord with the good conduct which students had pledged when they entered the college.

Despite the warnings, the rally took place in a downpour the next day. Attendance estimates ranged from 150 to 500. One newspaper said 150 stayed out of classes, while the college said "Class attendance was ... normal."

What will happen to demonstrators is not known. The college has said, "Constitutions of those groups supporting the stoppage is to be reviewed to determine the extent of illegal conduct. No individual discipline is anticipated."