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University Daily Kansan Monday, October 30, 1961
A Futile Effort
Bertrand Russell, who recently led a group of "ban the bomb" marchers to the Soviet Embassy in London in protest over Khrushchev's decision to test a 50 megaton nuclear bomb, left in disgust when he got the same stale propaganda line. Lord Russell should have known better than to protest to the Soviets in the first place.
THE ACTIONS OF THE BAN THE BOMB marchers were futile, and so are those of the other groups who think they can influence Soviet policy by enlightened persuasion. The Kremlin has persistently shown itself immune to such methods. The Soviet Union's contempt for the opinions of other nations (when they are not backed by force) was shown quite forcefully by its announcement of a new series of nuclear tests at the start of the neutralists conference in Yugoslavia.
over a action that could bring suffering to many nations and peoples. Their march was an expression of public outrage over that action. That outrage was echoed all over the free world—in the press, in parliaments and by groups of concerned citizens in many nations.
There is no doubt that Lord Russell and his marchers were sincere. They were indignant
Yet it had no effect. It did not reach the Russian people, for there was no way it could. And if accurate reflections of world outrage had been allowed to enter the Soviet Union by the men in the Kremlin, it is doubtful they would have produced significant opposition to the Soviet nuclear tests.
THE UNPLEASANT TRUTH OF THE LACK of effect this outrage had on the Kremlin was put to the test when the Soviet Union exploded a giant nuclear blast last week. That explosion was the clearest evidence that the rulers of the Soviet Union do not consider world opinion worth bothering with if it does not suit their ends.
William H. Mullins
Kansan Editors Criticized
Editors:
With your help Jerry Palmer and his YAF have succeeded in removing KU from the National Students Association. I hope you and he are rejoicing today at having also succeeded in helping to keep Kansas in its usual role of
isolationism and backwardness.
However, there may still be hope for KU and Kansas as long as there are a few outspoken and progressive young people like Miss McMillen and Charles Mengnih.
Wallace D. Johnson Jr.
New York City sophomore
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas student newspaper
Founded 1889, became biweekly 1904, triweekly 1908, daily Jan. 16, 1912.
Telephone VIking 3-2700 Extension 711, news room Extension 376, business office
Member Inland Daily Press Association, Associated Collegiate Press.
Represented by National Advertising Service, 18 East 50 St., New York 22,
N.Y. News service: United Press International. Mail subscription rates:
$3 a semester or $5 a year. Published in Lawrence, Kan., every afternoon
during the University year except Saturdays and Sundays, University
holidays and examination periods. Second class postage paid at Lawrence,
Kansas.
NEWS DEPARTMENT
Tom Turner ... Managing Editor
EDITORIAL DEPARTMENT
Ron Gallagher ... Editorial Editor
Bill Mullins and Carrie Merryfield, Assistant Editorial Editors.
RUSINESS DEPARTMENT
Tom Brown ... Business Manager
by Dick Bibler
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS
Bitter Voice On NSA
Editor:
"NO CLASS HERE 'TIL NINE."
Judi Jamison
One of these days, very soon, I'm sure those members of NSA and the ASC who supported the committee will be able to use the cliche, "I told you so." When KU becomes an isolated iceberg of Conservatism, now that NSA—this horrid "hot-bed of liberalism" — has been abolished (by the way, I am a moderate), when KU's voice has become faint and totally futile on a national level, perhaps the ASC will wake up. Whether it was total ignorance and apathy which determined the ASC vote, how many of the attempted pressures on certain members were effective, how much a lack of parliamentary knowledge and incorrect procedure allow the ASC to be manipulated by a few of the elite, I would hesitate to say.
Whether many members of the ASC realized their hypocrisy, as they typically contradicted the party platforms on which they themselves ran — supporting NSA — is also a question each concerned KU student must debate within his own mind.
Ottawa junior
\* \* \*
Answer to Apathy
Attention KU students and faculty!
Are you tired of being called apathetic? Are you getting impatient with the people who keep telling you you're doing nothing, when you don't know of anything to do? Well, there is something you can do.
In about two weeks, the KU-Y. in conjunction with Watson Library will sponsor a book drive for the Asia Foundation. The Asia Foundation is a non-profit, nonpolitical organization founded in 1951 in California and devoted to assistance to Asians. Its activities take the form of grants or loans to students wishing to study in the U.S., advisory personnel, supplies or equipment and books or other materials. It aids projects in many fields such as education, research, community development and social welfare. Its income is dependent on voluntary contributions.
What I'm getting at is that the book drive at KU is a chance and an opportunity for you to do something in international affairs. We are interested in collecting textbooks, technical books, classics and quality paperbacks. The Asia Foundation pays the entire shipping costs.
There will be more information about this soon, but keep it in mind now, won't you? It's your opportunity to answer the charge of apathy.
Special Projects KU-Y
McCarthyism Revised
Carolyn Shull
(Editor's note: Robert G. Colodny was a visiting assistant professor of history at KU during the 1957-58 and 1958-59 terms.)
It still happens. A University of Pittsburgh history professor has been under attack since early this year for his views on Castro and Cuba, his membership in allegedly subversive organizations, and his service with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War. The professor is Robert G. Colodny, formerly of the University of California, San Francisco State College, Wesleyan University (Conn.), and the University of Kansas. A specialist in the history of science and the history of revolutions, he came to Pitt in 1959.
Robert G. Colodny
The attack has been led by the Pittsburgh Press — local outlet for the Scripps-Howard chain. It started with an interview carried on its front page for Sunday, January 15, in which the paper quoted Dr. Colodny as saying that he believed Cuba might become "another Spain" through outside intervention in her revolution.
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For example:
—Dr. Colodny has "signed a statement issued by the 'Fair Play For Cuba Committee,' an openly pro-Castro organization,' and among other signers were "drama critic Kenneth Tynan, who staged a British TV program last spring featuring, among other 'distinguished American dissenters,' Alger Hiss."
ALTHOUGH IN SUBSTANCE that was no more than many others were saying at the time. Press reporter William Gill, by using a series of italicized parenthetical editorial notes to link up the professor's statements with events and facts not immediately germane, made the article in effect a charge of subversion.
Two days after the article appeared, Pennsylvania state Representative John T. Walsh of nearby McKeesport — who in the intervening 48 hours had announced his candidacy for the mayoralty of that town in the Democratic primary — denounced Dr. Colodny in the state legislature and introduced a two-part resolution calling for an investigation for Pitt and of "anti-U.S. sentiment" in all state-aided schools.
Dr. Colodny was said to have fought with the Abraham Lincoln Brigade during the Spanish Civil War and, the story noted, "The Communist-led Abraham Lincoln Brigade still tops the Attorney General's list of subversive organizations..." (The University's student newspaper pointed out that the Attorney General's list is in alphabetical order.)
The professor had been employed in Mexico by the government while Lazaro Cardenas was President and, "Only this week it was disclosed in the Press that a Communist-linked Latin American 'peace congress' . . . was planned last month in the home of former Mexican President Lazaro Cardenas."
ON THE WALL BEHIND THE DOOR in the professor's University office was a souvenir poster from the Spanish Civil War. The poster bore the legend "UGT, Federacion Nacionale La Edificacion." The organization, reporter Gill explained, "was a known Communist organization during the Spanish Civil War."
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American Legion and Veterans of Foreign Wars groups in the area joined in the fracas and pressed for a state investigation. And, The Press asked editorially "how a scholar with the requisite degrees to land a place on the Pitt history faculty can so misread current events as to find that the murderous, Communist-dominated tyranny of Fidel Castro is merely an 'agrarian reform' movement."
PENNSYLVANIA SUPREME COURT JUSTICE Michael A. Musmanno, who apparently had no other connection with the case, told the Press that Dr. Colodny "would have to be deaf, dumb and blind not to know . . . that if anyone lifted Castro's beard he would find the Communist manifesto wrapped around his neck."
Rep. Francis E. Walter, D-Pa., Chairman of the House Committee on Un-American Activities, disclosed exclusively to the Press that his Committee's files contained "many mentions" of Dr. Colodny, although the professor himself had never appeared before that body.
FOR HIS PART, DR. COLODNY told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the only other newspaper in the city following the demise of Hearst's Sum-Telegraph, that "under no circumstances could it be said that I either supported or attacked the Cuban Government." He claimed he had merely given his views as an historian and that they had been misconstrued. The Post-Gazette, in an editorial headed "Fair Play for Professor," called the proposed investigation "an educational witch-hunt."
Similarly worded criticisms of the Press and Representative Walsh also were expressed by American Association of University Professors' chapters and members at Pitt and neighboring Carnegie Tech, Chatham, Duquesne, and Mount Mercy colleges; the American Civil Liberties Union, SANE (Colodny is vice chairman of the local chapter). The Friends Meeting of the Quaker Church, and noted Pittsburgh Catholic priest, Father Charles Owen Rice.
To them, the Press replied: "The defenders of Dr. Robert G. Colodny . . . get more and more frenzied. . . Familiar words and phrases crop up in these defenses — 'smear,' 'innuendo,' 'witch-hunt,' and 'guilt by association' — phrases invariably invoked when left-wingers are exposed."
(Reprinted from the Oct. 23 New Republic. This is the first half of an article by Joseph G. Colangelo Jr. The second half will be printed tomorrow.)