Two Legislators Confident Red Teacher Bills to Fail

Two prominent members of the joint legislative committee on Education yesterday saw slight chance of passage for the three bills introduced to bar Communist teachers from colleges in this state.

One of the senior members of the committee, which heard testimony on the bills at a public session Wednesday, pointed out that similar measures had failed of passage in past years, and said he saw little difference between this year's versions and previous ones. "Personally, I think they're so much hogwash," he said, but still held out slight chance for passage, saying, "but we do some awfully stupid things in this legislature."

Another member said flatly, "I don't think any legislation as stringent as this will pass." He thought that his committee would not reach the final decision on the bills, feeling that they would be referred to the State Commission on Communism. Pointing to their perennial character, he commented, "I'm sorry, but these bills are such an old story I can't get excited about them any more."

Representative Charles Iannello (D-Boston), who introduced two of the bills and spoke in favor of all three at the hearing, was rather dubious about the prospects for the bills. Saying that he would agree to some modifications in the bills to make them constitutionally more palatable, he feared, however, that "all the teeth might be taken out of them."

Wednesday, Iannello called Harvard a "nest of Communists," and yesterday he reiterated his stand, saying "most of our complaints about Communist teachers have come from there." He had no comment on the opposition to his bills expressed at the hearing by Samuel H. Beer, professor of Government, and Mark De Wolfe Howe '28, professor of Law, but repeated his condemnation of professors who invoked the Fifth Amendment.

The first of these bills would strengthen the oath presently required of teachers demanding affirmation of support for the Constitution. The second would require presidents of colleges in Massachusetts to expel "Communists or Communist sympathizers from their teaching staffs.