87 Faculty Members Protest California 'Red' Dismissals

Eighty-seven faculty members last night sent a statement to the University of California, protesting the action of California's Board of Regents in firing professors who refused to take a non-communist oath. The statement said that "in large controversies the greatest, danger is that the basic principle will be obscured by secondary issues."

The professors, "profoundly concerned," claimed that the California Regents had "renounced its faith in the responsibility of scholars" and "violated faculty rights of academic freedom and tenure." The statement was sent to the Vice-Chairman of the University of California's Academic Senate.

More than 30 courses have been dropped from the California registers because of professors and instructors lost in this purge.

Seymour E. Harris '20, Professor of Economics, said the west coast University's Academic Senate--an organization of faculty members--earlier in the year recommended that 20 to 30 teachers who had refused to sign a controversial non Communist oath required by the regents be retained on the faculty. The loyalty of all had been cleared by the Senate, he added.

Although the regents agreed to this in July, they reversed their stand in August and dismissed the men, according to Harris. It is this action that the Harvard professors are protesting.

Signers included Dean Griswold; Earnest A. Hooten, professor of Anthropology; Kirtley F. Mather, professor of Geology; Harlow Shapley, Paine Professor of Practical Astronomy; Sumner H. Slichter, Lamont University Professor; Raphael Demos, Alford Professor of Natural Religion, Moral Philosophy, and Civil Polity; Michael Karpovich, professor of History; and Archibald MacLeish, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory.