2 Professors Charged With Red Activities

Two Harvard professors and a handful of alumni were included in a group of intellectuals accused of being typical sponsors of communist front organizations.

The charge, levelled in the June issue of a highly conservative monthly magazine, Facts Forum, comes from a report prepared by the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee under the chairmanship of Senator James O. Eastland (D-Miss.) and released in January.

Both Harlow Shapley, Paine Professor of Practical Astronomy, and Kirtley F. Mather, professor of Geology emeritus, denied the charges upon their release.

Shapley at that time accused the report as just a way to get headlines. "Beyond the same tedious material that McCarthy floundered with, there is nothing new here," he said. Mather brushed off the charges against him emphatically. "It is untrue, of course," he said. "The group of men on the list are a curious mixture of people. Some are out and out Communists and some are patriotic Americans."

In reviewing the organizations which he has sponsored, Mather said that they have done nothing more subversive than criticize the McCarran Act.

Evidence Ridiculous

Much of the information in support of the Senate's charges came from stories which ran in the Daily Worker. Shapley called this type of evidence ridiculous, pointing out that the Worker has run the names of many prominent Americans.

He said, however, that some groups with which he was affiliated were called subversive by the Attorney General after he had ceased to be a member.

The list will do a great deal of harm, Mather claimed, because it will discourage men from worthwhile causes out of fear of being blacklisted themselves.