Harvard Professors Are Organizing Against New National Security Bill

A number of Harvard professors have been organizing during the last several months against a Federal bill which-if passed by the Senate-would exclude allegedly subversive individuals from areas of defense related activity.

The Defense Facilities and Industrial Security Act was passed by the House on a vote of 274 to 65 last January and is now awaiting action by the Senate's Judiciary Committee.

The bill, written by the House Internal Security Committee and proposed to Congress by its chairman, Rep. Richard D. Ichord (D-Mo.), was conceived as a response to Supreme Court rulings in 1967 and 1968 which invalidated the "screening" clauses of the 1950 Internal Security Act.

It permits the Secretary of Defense to label as a defense facility "any plant, factory, industry, public utility, mine, laboratory, educational institution, research organization, railroad, airport, pier, waterfront installation, canal, dam, bridge, highway, vessel, aircraft, vehicle, or pipenne" from which suspected personnel may be barred or removed.

It gives the President summary power to entorce this ruling against anyone who, in his judgment, "has as a purpose the destruction of the constitutional form of government of the United States by any means deemed necessary to that end, including the unlawful use of force or violence."

It also removes that person's right to confront his accuser if the Defense Secretary rules that further examination of the evidence against him might expose the intelligence apparatus by which the evidence has been obtained.

In response to the House's action, Harvard professors have moved on two fronts since last Spring to prevent Senate approval of the bill:

Twenty members of the 60-man Law Faculty signed a letter addressed to the Senate Judiciary Committee and circulated by Vern Countryman, professor of Law, last Spring. Countryman also sent the statement to 125 other Law Schools and received an additional 149 signatures.

After receiving the letter, Sen. Joseph Tydings (D-Md.) a member of the Judiciary Committee, wrote Countryman and assured him that the committee would hold hearings on the bill before taking any action on it.

Four Harvard scientists, along with 26 others, signed a letter last month mailed from Woods Hole marine biology research center to hundreds of scientists around the country, urging them to lobby in Congress against the bill.

The four are: Bernard D. Davis, Lehman Professor of, Bacterial Physiology; George Kistiakowsky, former science advisor to President Eisenhower and Lawrence Professor of Chemistry; Jack L. Strominger, professor of Biochemistry; and George Wald, Nobel laureate and Higgins Professor of Biology.

Comments

Countryman said yesterday that the bill is even less constitutional than the measures rejected by the Supreme Court. "It's so vague that no one could say with any assurance what they would try to cover with it. I think it would just about cover the waterfront," he said.

The bill, with its widespread implications for the industrial sector, could also be used to break strikes against particularly vital industries, he added.

Wald said of the proposed measure that it would also endanger the safety of dissident university students and faculty members. "It could take in universities that are engaged in research that could somehow be conceived as military," he said.