New Jersey: The Genovese Campaign

From either end of a long table in the auditorium of New Jersey's Seton Hall University, the two men sat glowering at each other. "It's an abuse of academic freedom to make such irresponsible, seditious statements," cried State Senator Wayne Dumont Jr., the Republican candidate for Governor Rejoined Democratic Governor Richard J. Hughes: "There are federal statutes against treason and sedition a complex of laws and courts, and 'an FBI to protect the nation." Then, when the debate was over, the protagonists stalked off separately without so much as a word or a handshake.

What had treason, sedition and academic freedom to do with New Jersey's gubernatorial race? Everything. Until July, Candidate Dumont, 51, a state-tax expert and attorney, and Incumbent Hughes, 56, an affable, undistinguished administrator who is seeking a second four-year term, had almost nothing to argue about. Both agreed that New Jersey's most pressing problem, a chronic shortage of revenue, could be solved only by new taxes. (New Jersey and Nebraska are the only two states in the Union that do not levy statewide taxes on income or retail sales.) Nor did the candidates electrify the populace with pleas for purer water, cleaner air, faster transit facilities.

A Jersey Dreyfus. Then, suddenly Dumont raised the issue of Eugene Genovese, 35, an American-history professor at Rutgers, New Jersey's state university. A short time before, Genovese had stood up at a campus teach-in to protest the war in Viet Nam. "I am a Marxist and a socialist," he declared. "Therefore, I do not fear or regret the impending Viet Cong victory in Viet Nam. I welcome it."

With that, the campaign caught fire. Dumont demanded that Genovese be dismissed or suspended, called on Hughes to join him in the ouster call. Hughes refused, siding loftily with Voltaire rather than Genovese, and forthwith nailed academic freedom into his platform. At Hughes's request, Rutgers' board of governors conducted an investigation, found that Genovese had done nothing to incur dismissal, and upheld his right to free speech. Nevertheless, the Genovese case turned into the Jersey equivalent of the Dreyfus affair.

Before the Family. Before a group of Princeton residents, the Governor angrily branded the injection of Genovese into the campaign as "the act of a desperate candidate making a cheap political issue out of free speech." Retorted Dumont: "We have 140,000 men in Viet Nam dodging bullets, and Genovese's views can only be achieved by killing Americans there. This is a question not of academic freedom but of academic license."

The Governor accused the G.O P candidate of Goldwaterism and "vampire politics," protested as a low blow his opponent's suggestion that he should defend Genovese before the family of a boy killed in Viet Nam. Campaigning in a chartered light plane, Dumont—who in fact opposed Goldwater's nomination in 1964—charged Hughes with the lowest, dirtiest, and most contemptible utterances." Said he: "I didn't know that $35,000 a year [the Governor's salary] meant so much."