PHILANTHROPY: Displaced Person

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"The Fund for the Republic," says Fund President Robert Maynard Hutchins, "is a kind of fund for the American Dream. The essence of the dream is and always has been freedom." The Fund for the Republic, said American Legion National Commander J. Addington Wagner last week, "is giving comfort to the enemies of America . . . We are convinced that the fund is doing evil work." Neither Hutchins nor Wagner stands alone in his opinion; Hutchins has the cheers of many citizens who fear that the U.S. is seeking security at the cost of civil liberty; Wagner speaks for those who fear that security is being subverted by a version of liberty that amounts to license. Upon the Fund for the Republic has thus descended an ugly, name-calling dispute.

The fund was established three years ago by the Ford Foundation as an independent unit. It was given $15 million and told to spend it in support of "activities directed toward the elimination of restrictions on freedom of thought, inquiry and expression in the U.S., and the development of policies and procedures best adapted to protect these rights." The great bulk of money spent so far has been on projects that come clearly within the fund's directive. Among these was the $64,000 study by Washington Lawyer Adam Yarmolinsky (TIME, Aug. 29) that, in its presentation of some shocking examples of the federal personnel security program in action, would justify the existence of the fund. Other projects include $400,000 to the Southern Regional Council for offices in twelve states to further "community education in intergroup relations"; $300,000 for a survey by Cornell University's Clinton Rossiter (author of Conservatism in America) on Communist influence on U.S. religion, Government, education, arts and mass media; $185,000 for a study by Harvard's Samuel A. Stouffer of popular attitudes toward internal Communism and civil liberties.

Personal Tendency. By the nature of its mission, the fund was bound to be attacked, and its success or failure was bound to depend on the ability of its spokesmen to meet the attacks. Hutchins has absorbed nearly all of the public-relations function, and Hutchins is so brilliant a controversialist that he sometimes seems to be looking for fights in which to display his debater's skill.

He has built this personal tendency into his own definition of the fund, pronouncing that its job is "to arouse an interest in civil liberties and to encourage debate about them."

Even without the fund's encouragement the postwar U.S. has resounded with debate on civil liberties. The need is not for more debate, but for debate of better quality, and, above all, for some answers to the very difficult questions raised by the presence of Communism and other forms of organized evil in a free society. The factual Yarmolinsky report, for example, made it clear how far the U.S. Government still is from working out standards and procedures that will at the same time protect itself from subversion and its employees from persecution.