The Mail

(The following letter from Dean Griswold of the Law School to Samuel P. Sears 17 is in response to a letter in which Sears protested a scheduled speech at the Law School by Oamund K. Fraenkel '08, vice-president of the National Lawyer's Guild.)

Dear Mr. Sears, Your letter of March 2, 1951, reached my office late last Saturday morning. I regret that you released it to the papers before I had any opportunity to send you a reply.

The problems you have raised in your letter are very serious ones indeed. I have long given thought to these matters. I am not a member of the National Lawyer's Guild, and never have been. I am not in sympathy with many of its actions.

In October, 1946, just after I became dean, I made a speech to our graduates at the meeting of the American Bar Association at Atlantic City, in which I said:

"I am a conservative. When I cannot find something better to do, I am likely to vote the Republican ticket. My instincts are cautious."

I am still cautious. I believe that the problems you have raised must be approached with care. It is easy in this area to do far more harm than good by hasty or ill considered action.

The organization which you have questioned consists of a small group of students who are affiliated with the National Lawyer's Guild. The Harvard Law School has not had any part in planning the programs of this group or in inviting its speakers. Within rather broad limits, the Faculty has always allowed groups of students to bring in speakers whom they wish to hear.

In my speech five years ago, I went on to say:

"I believe in free speech; in free press; in academic freedom, and in the free commerce of ideas. Many of the ideas are no good, but ideas are elusive things, and the only way to evaluate them is to set them free to see how they stand up in the midst of controversy."

I feel that it is of great importance that the fullest information should always be available to students and others with respect to organizations bringing programs to them. The report of the Committee on Un-American Activities in September, 1950, was widely printed in the newspapers, and I think our students generally are familiar with it.

The question when free speech goes beyond proper limitations is an extraordinarily difficult one to answer. You would have us act to suppress the local organization, by refusing to allow it to use Law School rooms for its speakers, Dean Griswold and, as I read your letter, by dismissing its members from the School.

Suppressing an organization is a very serious step to take. The local activities of this group of students do not seem to warrant such drastic action. The report of the Committee on Un-American Activities raise questions to which we have been giving serious consideration here. But we do not feel that we should suppress this local group because that Committee, without notice or hearing, has issued a report attacking the national organization with which the student group is affiliated. The United States Attorney General, with the resources of the Federal Bureau of Investigation at his disposal, has not seen fit to list the National Lawyer's Guild as a subversive organization.

Moreover, there now exists a procedure, under the McCarran Act, to determine and publicize the subversive character of organizations. This is intended to establish a public and orderly method for taking such action. This procedure calls for an investigation by the Attorney General, with conclusions to be reached by an impartial commission after a full hearing, and with a right to a judicial review.

On the basis of our knowledge of the activities of the local group, and in the absence of any official action under the McCarran Act against the National Lawyer's Guild itself, we have felt that it would be an improper interference with the legitimate freedom of our students to take any action towards suppressing this group at the Law School. Erwin N. Griswold   Dean, Harvard Law School