Lewis, Levenson Debate Extremism

Hulton Lewis III had an unusual ex-seance last night. Two people called to a moderate.

Lewis and Daniel Levenson '54, a Law-school for the American Civil Liberties Don in Boston, debated "Extremist Groups in American Society" before a law School Forum audience of about 60.

Lewis Surprises

In the course of the debate, Lewis, a her director of the Young Americans for Freedom, a campaign speech her for William E. Miller, and a forum employee of the House Un-American Lewities Committee, surprised his audience. He denied that the civil rights movement was Communist inspired. He said he "didn't understand to this day" very Goldwater's acceptance-speech sense of extremism. He defended the not to revolution" of the South Viethese and said he could "sense and sympathy for the revolutionary tendencies" of Negroes in Alabama and Missappi, though he though that "democratic processes" would solve the problems.

Lewis defined as "extremist groups" those which conspire to overthrow the government by force and those which serve a foreign power. He included the Communist, Socialist Labor, and Nazi parties, the Black Muslims, and the Ku Klux Klan. In answer to a question, he said that the HUAC had been investigating the Klan for 10 years at the time he left its staff.

At the end of the formal debate, two student questioners said that Lewis had, in the words of Frank White '66, "impressed me as a roaring, screaming moderate."

Levenson, who defined extremists as "groups tending to place the state over the rights of the individual," said that "the crisis of extremism will be with us for many years," and would be "intensified" by the continuing pressure of Communism abroad and "bigness" at home. He said the "great danger lies in their assault on the public educational system."