New McCarthyism At the State Department

THE STATE Department's refusal last spring to grant an entry visa to an Italian Communist official invited to lecture at Harvard and other American universities is a flagrant violation of academic freedom. The department's invocation of a Joe McCarthy era law forbidding foreign communists entry into the United States unless they are granted an ineligibility waiver, as justification for not giving Giorgio Napolitano a visa, is an example of the purest form of bureaucratic nonsense. Congess should certainly repeal the law in question, since denying communists entry into this country on the grounds that they represent a danger to the national interest does nothing to insure national security. But, more importantly, the law itself is an invalid excuse for the State Department's behavior. All that is necessary to circumvent this dated law is a recommendation from the State Department to the Justice Department that a waiver of inelegibility be issued.

The State Department's failure to give such a recommendation means that they decided Napolitano's entry into this country, and his participation in academic seminars on Italian politics, as a leader of what is now Italy's second most powerful political party, would be a danger to the national interest. Such a judgment deserves condemnation.

Giorgio Napolitano should be re-invited to America, and the State Department should grant him a visa without delay.