Oath Didn't Keep Local Prof From U of Cal Position

The controversial Regents' loyalty oath did not stop a College professor from accepting a job for this summer at the University of California. In fact he doesn't know whether he signed the oath or not.

Gordon R. Willey, Bowditch Professor of Central American and Mexican Archaeology and Ethnology, said yesterday he agreed to take the summer school teaching post in February, two months before the oath was invalidated by the California State Court of Appeals.

Signed Something

At that time, Willey remembered, he did sign a document which looked like the Massachusetts teaching oath. It could have been either the University of California loyalty oath or a new oath which all employees of the state have to take.

Last fall Howard Mumford Jones, professor of English, refused a summer teaching job at California because he disapproved of the school's oath.

Willey said he too disapproves of the oath, but added that he would have been willing to sign since he had nothing to hide. He said he had hoped all along the oath would be thrown out.