Academic Freedom: Futile Bans on Ideas

At the tag end of a year of churning unrest on U.S. campuses, an old issue flamed anew at two large universities: whether college students should be allowed to hear Communists or other speakers whose politics range far from the U.S. mainstream.

In Chapel Hill. The only state law in the U.S. that bars such speakers affects, unhappily enough, the most respected university in the South. Last week 230 teachers at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill signed petitions protesting the ban; all but 40 of them said they would quit if the university loses accreditation over the matter, as threatened by the Southern Association of Colleges and Secondary Schools.

The law forbids campus speeches

regardless of topic—by "known Communists," persons who have pleaded the Fifth Amendment in loyalty investigations, and anyone who has advocated overthrow of the U.S. or North Carolina constitutions. It was passed at the end of the state legislature's 1963 session, shortly after University of North Carolina students and professors had taken part in civil rights marches in four North Carolina cities. University President William C. Friday learned that the bill had been introduced, found that it had cleared both houses in just 19 minutes while he was driving the 30 miles from Chapel Hill to the capitol in Raleigh to protest. Similar bills were rejected by state legislators in Mississippi, Florida, Georgia and South Carolina.*

The North Carolina law caused cancellation of an appearance by the late British Geneticist J.B.S. Haldane, who refused to declare in writing that he was not a Communist. Proposed invitations to Playwright Arthur Miller and Soviet Civil Engineer Dr. V. V. Sokolovsky were dropped. Since the ban, the most controversial speakers have been Actress Jayne Mansfield and Play boy Publisher Hugh Hefner.

By a vote of 77 to 4, the university's unwieldy board of trustees (which is elected by the legislature) demanded that control over speakers be returned to the university. Warned Chapel Hill Chancellor Paul F. Sharp: "Professors these days do not have to stay in an environment which turns hostile."

Governor Dan Moore called for "calm and judicial consideration of the problem," but last week, by proposing that a committee study the issue this summer, he blocked a drive in the legislature to modify the ban.

And in Columbus. A similar ban at Ohio State University, enacted by the school's trustees in 1951 under continual prodding by the conservative Columbus Dispatch, is under increasing fire from other Ohio newspapers and the university faculty. Some 300 students protested the rule in April through picketing and sit-in demonstrations. More than 400 teachers have signed petitions calling for its repeal.