Corporation Vote Rejects NDEA Student Loan Funds

The Corporation voted yesterday to reject the $357,873 of Federal funds assigned to Harvard under the Student Loan Program of the National Defense Education Act. In a parallel move, President A. Whitney Griswold announced that Yale University was also withdrawing in protest from the loan program.

Opposition to the disclaimer affidavit, which loan recipients must sign, was cited by both universities as the reason for the action. In a letter to Lawrence G. Derthick, U.S. Commissioner of Education, explaining the University decision, President Pusey stated that, "It is our earnest concern, while the matter of continuing or expunging section 1001 (f) (1) is still under consideration, to take no action which might possibly be considered as approving the Act as it now stands." He pointed out that a bill which would remove the disclaimer affidavit requirement from NDEA is now in Congressional committee.

The NDEA requires both a disclaimer affidavit and an oath of allegiance to the United States. "The oath of allegiance required by section 1001 (f) (2) makes the disclaimer affidavit superfluous," Pusey continued. The disclaimer affidavit, he said, "is also discriminatory since it singles out students alone in our population--and among students, the neediest--as subjects for special distrust... Since the (disclaimer) provision would present no barrier to those it is designed to catch, it is ineffective... As a kind of test-oath substituting an implied threat of coercion for persuasion in the realm of ideas, it seems counter to the philosophical principles on which our national strength has been built. It also seems to imply interference on the part of the government in an area of administration which belongs properly without restriction to free institutions of higher learning."

The NDEA provision at which criticism is leveled, stipulates that loans can be made only when the recipient "has executed and filed with the Commissioner an affidavit that he does not believe in, and is not a member of and does not support any organization that believes in or teaches, the overthrow of the United States Government by force or violence or by any illegal or unconstitutional methods."

The following colleges and universities have rejected NDEA funds: Amherst, Bryn Mawr, Goucher, Harvard, Haverford, Oberlin, Princeton, Reed, Swarthmore, and Yale.

Pusey reaffirmed the University's approval of the Federal student loan program, adding "We have many needy students here who would be happy to have its advantages opened to them if this 3