Professors: Blistering by Brewster

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Yale's Assistant History Professor Staughton Lynd had defied U.S. pass port regulations, traveled to an enemy capital, and there denounced the U.S.

Government as a liar and U.S. policy as "immoral, illegal and antidemocrat ic." In consequence, said President Kingman Brewster Jr., "members of the Yale community have asked about my personal opinion of Mr. Lynd's trip to Hanoi." He obliged with a blistering.

Brewster said that he could accept Lynd's trip as a "conscientious," if "misguided," effort to seek facts "in the cause of peace." As for the passport violation, that could be left to the law enforcers. Even the fact that the invitation " came from Hanoi through a senior official of the U.S. Communist Party" could be overlooked "as long as I could believe in [Lynd's] independence of mind and in his stated purpose."

But, said Brewster, he could not condone Lynd's speech in Hanoi. "He is entitled to these opinions, but the use of his presence in Hanoi to give this aid and comfort to a government engaged in hostilities with American forces seems to me inconsistent with the purposes of fact finding in the name of peace. Mr. Lynd's disparagement of his country's leadership and policies, while in Hanoi," was an "irresponsible action" that "has done a disservice to the causes of freedom of dissent, freedom of travel and conscientious pacifism."

Lynd had said earlier that he might offer his resignation "so that the university, if it chose to retain me, would be doing so of its own free will." Having lost the university's confidence, another man might think it most fitting to quit. Not Lynd. "I have concluded," he said, "that the presence here of someone like myself may have some educational value."