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University Daily Kansan Monday, Nov. 5. 19
Free Forum for Ideas?
College and university presidents often proclaim that their institution lives up to the basic obligation of a university to protect the rights of students to hear and discuss all ideas, no matter how controversial.
Such proclamations often return to haunt the president, for before too long nearly every university president is faced with the problem of whether to defy public criticism when a student group invites a controversial speaker.
At the University of Michigan, the Board of Regents recently passed a by-law which re-stated the university's policy "to foster a spirit of free inquiry and to encourage the timely discussion of a wide variety of issues."
However, it then went on to specifically prohibit speakers from advocating that the audience taken action prohibited by federal, state or university regulations and said that "advocating or urging the modification of the government of the United States or of the state of Michigan by violence or sabotage is specifically prohibited."
WHEN SUCH CRITICISM arises, many university presidents fail to live up to their responsibilities and conveniently forget their earlier lofty proclamation that a university must be a free forum for ideas.
IF FOLLOWED, this by-law would ban not only members of the Communist Party but also members of the Student Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (SNCC) and other groups advocating peaceful violation of segregation laws in Southern states.
The by-law probably is the result of the controversy which arose when two members of the Communist Party were invited to speak at
the Michigan campus last year. The invitation brought severe pressure upon the university administration to prohibit the speaker from appearing.
The Michigan president refused to bow to the pressure. However, this year he was completely in favor of the Regents' by-law.
AT A NUMBER of other universities, presidents or Regents took steps last year to ban Communists from speaking on campus. Yet in many cases these same presidents earlier had proclaimed their agreement with the idea that a university should not place any restrictions on the free exchange of ideas.
Most university administrators are afraid or unwilling to protect the basic function and purpose of a university in the face of opposition from politicians, pressure groups, or the public in general.
The reason for such hypocrisy is not hard to find. It is the same reason that the editor of the Colorado Daily was fired by the CU president last month.
Such presidents are to be commended for having the courage to preserve the freedom and basic purpose of their institutions. Unfortunately, too few presidents have this courage.
THERE ARE NOTABLE exceptions. The University of Minnesota and University of Oregon last year were faced with severe criticism when members of the Communist party were invited to speak. Both refused to back down.
Too many university presidents act more like politicians or corporation presidents rather than like responsible university presidents.
-Clayton Keller
Pennsylvania Race Desperate
By Zeke Wigglesworth
(This is the fourteenth in a series of articles on gubernatorial and congressional contests in the 1962 election.)
Few gubernatorial races are being fought as desperately as the one in Pennsylvania. More is at stake than just control of the state and the prestige of being governor; at stake are more than 50,000 "spoils" jobs.
They are Richardson Dilworth, mayor of Philadelphia, and William W. Scranton, Congressional representative of Pennsylvania's 10th district.
This year, for the honor of handing out the 50,000 jobs, two men with almost completely contrasting personalities are running for the governorship of the Keystone State.
DILWORTH, a Democrat, is given credit, along with Sen. Joseph Clark, for having made once-Republican-dominated Pennsylvania a democratic borough. Dilworth, a graduate of the Harvard Law School, is considered by his followers and his opponents to be a thorough politician but basically a slow mover. He is, according to Time Magazine, "uncomfortable while partaking of that backslapping, handshaking routine..."
Dilworth roams the state of Pennsylvania, delving into the many problems the state faces; unemployment, natural resources, industrial well-being, and mental health. His basic approach to Scranton is to label him "Little Lord Fauntleroy" and brand him as a political babe-in-the-woods. (Scranton's first job of any importance was his present position as U.S. Congressman.)
If William Scranton had to be labeled, it would have to be as the representative of the big industrial interests in Pennsylvania. Several big companies operating in the state, such as U.S. Steel, the Pennsylvania Railroad, Bethlehem Steel Corp. and others, have given "at least $2.5 million" to Scranton's campaign, according to The Nation magazine.
SCRANTON'S BACKGROUND lends itself easily to big industry interests. After he returned from World War II (as a captain in the Army Air Force), he became involved with the International Text Book Co., Huddon Craftsmen, Inc., and served as president of the Scranton-Lackawanna Trust Co.
Later he acted as chairman of the board of the Northeastern Broadcasting Corp. and then served as special assistant to then Secretary of State Christian Herter.
In addition, he had dealings with the International Salt Co., the Lackawanna Railroad Co., and the University of Scranton.
With this background, it is not surprising that Scranton emerges as the popular favorite with the industrial forces of Pennsylvania. In addition to the 50,000 jobs that the Pennsylvania governor hands out, there are many duties concerning industrial grants, health and accident insurance, labor regulations and minimum wage legislation. Scranton's background and interests, plus the $2.5 million he has received in campaign funds from big business in Pennsylvania, make it clear that he will bend a friendly ear to industry in the state.
THE OTHER KEY race in the Pennsylvania elections is between Sen. Joseph Clark and Rep. James Van Zandt.
Sen. Clark, elected in 1956 to his present senatorial seat, is the type of man President Kennedy had in mind when he called on the American people to elect "thinking" Democrats to Congress this November.
When Clark ran for senator in 1956, the Republicans in Pennsylvania had an edge of slightly more than a million over the Democrats. Today, thanks chiefly to Clark's efforts, there are 161,000 more registered Democrats than Republicans in Pennsylvania.
CLARK'S RECORD in the Senate has been almost perfect for a Democrat. In the last session of Congress, for example, he voted "for" on almost every piece of legislation that President Kennedy tried to pass. The only exception was a non-vote cast on the minimum wage bill of $1.25 an hour.
Rep. Van Zandt is an old politician who has served in every Congress beginning with the 76th. Some of his opponents call him a "professional patriot" because of his participation in the BFOE, the Masons, the MOOSE, the Eagles, the Lions Club, the American Legion, the Veterans of Foreign Wars
In the Senate, he serves on some liberal-minded committees such as Labor and Public Welfare, Special Committee on Aging, and the National Cultural Center Committee. In addition, he serves on the important Post Office and Civil Service Committee.
and the AMVETS. He is a retired Navy rear admiral and is one of the few congressmen who resigned their seat to join the armed forces in World War II.
UNLIKE CLARK, who has heaped scholastic awards upon himself, Van Zandt is not a college graduate. He says in his own biography that he was educated in the "schools of Altoona (Pa.) and the apprentice shops of the Pennsylvania Railroad." He received an honorary doctor of laws degree from Rider College in Trenton, N. J., in 1956.
Over the years, Van Zandt has voted along more or less strict party lines. He was violently opposed to Franklin D. Roosevelt, moderately opposed to Truman, and cool to Kennedy.
The races for governor and U.S. senator in Pennsylvania are being fought with usual political vehement, but according to many observers the Scranton-Dilworth fight is a political historian's dream. The amount of name-calling between the two men is enormous, and indications are that it will not cease until election day.
IF PENNSYLVANIA sends Clark back for a second term, one more strong voice will be added to the Kennedy camp. If Van Zandt goes back to Congress as a senator, however, another chilling voice of Republican conservatism will shrill in Kennedy's ears.
His campaign, according to The Nation, has been "exclusively devoted to calling Clark names in the scatterfire fashion associated with the late Senator McCarthy and the late . . . Richard Nixon."
When people seek freedom, they are always impatient. — Ralph J. Bunche
All things considered, the races in Pennsylvania should be noisy—and interesting.
Short Ones
The greatest minds are capable of the greatest vices as well as of the greatest virtues.—Rene Descartes.
Half a fact is a whole falsehood. Elias L. Magoon
The wrong way always seems the more reasonable.—George Moore
It Looks This Way
Rules Apply to All
It appears that the world has been granted a reprieve from thermonuclear destruction. After a week in which many persons went to bed skeptical of ever seeing the light of another dawn, the two super powers, the United States and Russia, are making an effort to ease the crisis which came dangerously close to an explosion.
In establishing a bold arms blockade of Cuba, President Kennedy and his advisers acted under a calculated risk that Russia was not willing to risk an atomic war to establish offensive missile bases in the heart of the Western Hemisphere. Khrushchev's announced plan to remove the bases from Cuba, if sincere, seems to argue that the President and his advisers guessed right.
NO ONE AWARE of the gravity of the situation is yet ready to say the crisis is over or that everyone can go back to feeling "uneasy" about the state of world affairs as opposed to the near terror that existed much of last week. The U.S.-and in a larger sense, the world-is not out of the woods yet.
One thing, however, seems to have been demonstrated by events of the past week, combined with certain other world developments over the past few years. It is that those around the world who expect world peace to be paid for always by the United States' backing down when the Russians decide to apply pressure had better search for another formula.
As committed to world peace as the U.S. must be, and as conscious as it must be of its responsibility as a nuclear power, it is justly committed even more to its own national security—whatever the cost to itself, its protagonist, and whoever else might be unlucky enough to get caught in the cross-fire.
Nor can the United States be lectured on this point by the so-called neutral nations of the world, least of all by those neutrals who define their stand as one which must allow them a free hand to seek whatever national goals they choose, and by whatever means.
THE GENERAL approval given by the American people to the actions of their government in the Cuban blockade, even while fearing the possible outcome, indicates their belief in the justness of their own national survival, Lord Bertrand Russell and assorted peace committees to the contrary.
The U.S. is and has been more susceptible to world opinion than the Soviet Union, and Moscow has proved itself adept at making use of this turn of events as a potent propaganda and diplomatic weapon. Perhaps the attitude of the neutrals has been prompted by a belief that there is no use to try to deter Moscow but that the U.S. can always be influenced in the cause of world peace.
In some respects such an attitude is flattering to the U.S. It is also patently erroneous, as the recent Cuban crisis should demonstrate.
In its present dangerous tight-wire walk, the world can use all the bona fide neutrals and pacifists it can get. But it must be a moral neutrality that is practiced and not a narrow nationalistic neutrality which places self-seeking ends first. It must be a neutrality which is committed first and foremost to world peace, and which speaks out forcefully against any threat to that peace, from whatever source.
THE UNITED NATIONS may be a good start in the right direction, but there has not yet been fostered a system of world order strong enough to serve as a guard against the ancient game of naked power politics, with all that it implies in the way of dangers to world peace.
While the leaders of many of these neutral nations have shown themselves adept in the use of the platitudes which have currency in the discourse on world peace, several have shown that in a conflict between world peace and their own national fulfillment, world peace is a secondary consideration.
It is folly to scold the super powers for tampering with the peace of the world while members of the "in group" are allowed to justify aggression under the cloak of anti-colonialism. Either we are all committed to world peace or we are all committed to power politics. The first principle of equitable law is that the rules apply to everyone or they apply to no one.
The willingness many neutrals have shown to stand mute while the Soviet Union plays havoc with world peace—such as in the case of the deafening silence that came from the Belgrade conference earlier this year when Russia broke the nuclear test moratorium—and at the same time to scorn for shame any U.S. action to protect its own security or that of its allies, is further evidence of the amoral character of some types of neutrality.
THUS, SUCH a world pacifist and staunch neutralist as Nehru of India saw no need to apologize for his country's invasion of Portuguese Goa, and Sukarno of Indonesia strutted belligerently in his demand for West New Guinea. With Red China presently battering down its northern frontier, India soon may be forced to reassess neutralism as a way of life in the present world situation.
University of Kaasas student newspaper
—Richard Bonett
Daily Transan
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