Abolition and the Navy

This afternoon, the Department of Naval Science will show a film, Operation Abolition, which deals, according to the Department, with the "communist-inspired" student riots against the House Un-American Activities Committee in San Francisco last May. Although distributed by a private firm, the film was prepared by two Un-American Activities Committee staff workers and is being circulated around the country with the Committee's endorsement.

As an article in the current issue of The Reporter shows, and as one of the Committee workers who prepared the film has admitted, Operation Abolition presents a grossly distorted picture of the San Francisco demonstrations, by judicious juxtaposition of incidents that occurred hours apart, by deft cutting, by statements in the narration that contradict the word of the local police.

For a department of the University both to present such a film uncritically, and to accept blithely (and print in the University Gazette) the description "communist-inspired student riots," is to use dangerous and irrelevant government propaganda in the guise of education.