The Home Front
BOHN, WILLIAM E.
THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Red Probers On the Campus Since I wrote my first little piece about the goings-on at the University of Michigan [The New Leader, May 17], the crisis has...
...Their cases are now being investigated by their deans, who will report to the President...
...I am too far away to sit in judgment on these matters...
...On May 10, an Un-American Activities subcommittee of the House of Representatives met at Lansing under the chairmanship of Congressman Kit Clardy...
...The two graduate students have been dealt with less violently...
...But the important thing to bear in mind is that the University is worse off because this investigation has been held...
...And the Michigan Daily ought to get some sort of prize for its reporting and discussion of this whole complicated series of events...
...I am especially impressed by a report in the May 1-1 number (with photograph) of the students discussing the suspension of their teachers on the Diagonal Walk which bisects the campus...
...THE HOME FRONT By William E. Bohn Red Probers On the Campus Since I wrote my first little piece about the goings-on at the University of Michigan [The New Leader, May 17], the crisis has developed at a frightening rate...
...When a university president has to defend himself in this way, things have reached a dangerous stage...
...Four of the accused men defended themselves, and there was a hot discussion participated in by many persons in the large audience...
...It seems to me that President Hatcher, for whom I have had high regard, has turned out to be, like the parson's egg, half good and half bad...
...By a vote of 16 to 11, it approved the suspension of the three professors...
...Before these friends and official superiors, they made complete confessions of whatever Communist connections they had had during their student days...
...That same night?late" that night, as the Michigan Daily reported the President suspended the three teachers...
...The head of the Mathematics Department introduced a resolution at a Faculty Senate meeting to appoint a committee to find out who was guilty of "leaking" this information...
...If I am wrong about men or actions, I hope that someone on the spot will set me right...
...What was these men's astonishment, when they were on the griddle in Lansing, to find that the Congressional investigators were in possession of the facts presumably imparted to friends in strict confidence...
...No Communists have been caught...
...The matter of their being awarded doctoral degrees is to be left to the Department of Economics...
...In the midst of a hot and confused debate, the motion was tabled by the President...
...If the facts seem to warrant it, the cases will be taken to the committee of the University Senate which has been set up to deal with charges against faculty members...
...If these committee citations are sustained by Congress, their cases will be reconsidered...
...During the day, three professors and two graduate students were questioned...
...Both faculty and students are excited about the affair...
...The decisions of this committee will then go to the ultimate authority, the Board of Regents...
...It was decided to take no action at present...
...An incident in connection with the Lansing hearing has led to bitterness within the faculty, and between the faculty and the President, which is without precedent in the history of the University...
...The President conferred long and carefully with the student committee appointed to consider such matters...
...When the trio of professors learned that they were to be called, they conferred with the heads of their departments, their deans, the President and other trusted friends...
...Will i regard to the suspension of the three young professors, a terrific debate is still going on...
...Whether all this constitutes fair treatment is the great question now before the University community...
...The SL itself voted unanimously to approve the action on the two graduate students...
...I am more than ever sure that they can legislate for themselves better than Congress, sitting in the national capital, can legislate for them...
...The students and members of the faculty have, it seems to me, been acting like alert and lively Americans...
...But the 11 members in opposition put up a stiff fight...
...All five of these men took refuge behind various amendments to the Constitution...
...Petitions in favor of the teachers are circulating and securing great lists of signatures among both students and faculty members...
...Though the men's salaries were not stopped, the action seemed to members of the faculty and student body too violent and too eagerly prompt as if the President were too anxious to prove himself cooperative...
...The June 21 AMA convention in San Francisco will rule on a proposed boycott of successful doctor partnerships...
...A forum meeting for discussion of the whole affair was arranged by the Student Legislature...
...The two young men have been charged with contempt of Congress...
...But the whole University, which is normally a vigorously cheerful community of young people, has been besmirched with bitterness and suspicion...
...A headline on the front page of the Daily of May 19 announces: "Hatcher Denies Breaking Faculty Confidences...
...President Harlan H. Hatcher had announced far in advance that the University expected members of the faculty to cooperate with any properly constituted committee...
...There is general approval of the handling of these two cases...
Vol. 37 • June 1954 • No. 24
