A Modest Victory

The Administrative Council of the City University of New York has reversed its October 26 decision prohibiting Communists from speaking at municipal colleges. At face value, the new ruling is hardly a cause for rejoicing. It merely restores the unsatisfactory status quoante bellum.

In October the Council had maintained (on anonymous legal advice) that allowing a Communist to speak at a municipal college would constitute a felony. Now, with the backing of the Committee on the Bill of Rights of the New York City Bar Association, it affirms that "the educational authorities on each campus are legally free to approve or disapprove invitations to members of the Communist Party of the United States, as they were heretofore."

Heretofore, the educational authorities of the city colleges abused their freedom to disapprove. This fall, Hunter College refused to rent its auditorium to the arch-conservative National Review; Brooklyn college delayed a speech by Mark Lane, a New York State Assemblyman who was indicted in Mississippi for his actions as a Freedom Rider; and Queens College revoked student invitations to Malcolm X, leader of the Black Muslims, and to Benjamin Davis, secretary of the U.S. Communist Party. (The ban on Davis provoked the discredited October 26 ruling.)

The Administrative Council's ruling in no way criticizes such administrative action; indeed, it sanctions them. The Council carefully refrained from saying anything to suggest that students have a right to hear controversial speakers. It did not intend to advance the cause of academic freedom in New York.

Nevertheless, academic freedom has been strengthened. The Administrative Council of the City University retreated from a peremptory stand under the pressure of student demonstrations, faculty petitions, and newspaper protests. The retreat is likely to have intimidated city college administrators. They may not be more broad-minded than they were before the Council's about-face, but are certainly more wary. For the proponents of academic freedom that is a modest victory.