The Case of the Fired 'Informer'

...Among the questions left unanswered by the University's spokesmen are these: -Is a teacher who cooperates fully with a Congressional committee to be penalized by dismissal, while teachers who have remained silent under the protection of the Fifth Amendment are retained...

...If a man has been involved in the Communist conspiracy and has made a clean breast of it, is there any moral reason why an institution should dismiss him...

...In the view of the Committee on Un-American Activities, former Communist party membership should not be held against an individual whose testimony convinces one that he has completely and finally terminated his Communist party membership...

...I hope it will be possible for your Board of Trustees to reconsider this decision...

...The Board of Trustees of American University will meet this week...

...To take any other position at this time would be beneath the dignity of an institution with a Christian relationship and commitments...

...Unquestionably, Judge Fletcher would make good this threat...

...It rather puts all repentant Communists in the category of martyrs, and it incidentally makes repentance a very hazardous adventure...

...Between the meeting of the Executive Committee which he did not attend and the meeting of the Board of Trustees on October 29, the Bishop had two private interviews with Fuchs...

...More protest in six months than in sixteen years...

...That was on July 15...

...Professor Fuchs's dismissal plays into the hands of the Communists...

...The letter concluded by urging that the University "disclose enough of the facts to justify its action...

...Herbert L. Packer and Ross D. Netherton...

...Un-appeased by Fuchs's first testimony, the House Committee subpoenaed him again...

...But this was not the end...

...The Bishop's motivations are, to say the least, difficult to understand at this point...

...Noting that his break with the party had occurred three years before he came to the University, President Anderson urged him to "go the whole way" and name his former associates...

...Over a period of seven years, he was promoted from assistant to associate to full professor, with accompanying salary increases...

...This time, at an executive session, he named 44 of his past Communist associates in Government employment, thereby furnishing important leads to the Committee and to the FBI...

...The question now being asked is: Does Bishop Oxnam feel it is consistent with the Christian doctrine of repentance and forgiveness to brand permanently a repentant Communist who has done everything in his power to atone for his former allegiance...

...He intended to testify fully concerning his own Communist activities, but would not name his former associates...

...Fuchs's competence and devotion as a teacher are attested not only by President Anderson's public statement, but by his record at the University...

...the Committee heard Fuchs's testimony, limited to his own Communist past, in executive session...

...Later the same day, Fuchs was notified by the President that his employment with the University would terminate on June 30, 1956, his leave of absence being extended until then...

...He did no work that summer, except to tutor a few of his former students without charge...

...In a statement approved by Judge Fletcher, President Anderson described Fuchs as "an intelligent, loyal and devoted teacher," and asserted that "the American University should therefore support his right as a citizen to pursue his chosen professional activities...

...American University is supported by the Methodist Church...

...Immediately after being subpoenaed, Fuchs told the University authorities what had happened and what he intended to do...

...Obviously, the precedent set by American University's dismissal of Fuchs in spite of, if not because of, his cooperation with the House Un-American Activities Committee could easily become disastrous...

...But whether he is called upon to do so will depend in all probability on Bishop Oxnam, who wields substantially more influence than the venerable Board Chairman...

...Judge Fletcher...

...For some reason, however, the meeting was set for September 13, when the Bishop was to be out of the country on a long-scheduled trip to receive an honorary degree from the Budapest Theological Seminary...

...Fuchs complied...

...It is detrimental to the work of the Committee, as well as unjust to Professor Fuchs, that he be penalized for the performance of a patriotic duty...

...After the second interview, he said that he had received authoritative confirmation of the genuineness of Fuchs's break with Communism...

...This has resulted in a curious chain of events which may reach its climax this week...

...He was then admitted to the meeting for questioning...

...In cases involving interrelated questions of security and academic freedom, does a university, whether privately or publicly supported, bear no responsibility for the effect of its actions on the efforts of recognized Government agencies to expose the Communist conspiracy...

...Probably the most influential member of its Board of Trustees is Bishop G. Bromley Oxnam, head of the diocese which includes Washington and Secretary of the National Council of Methodist Bishops...

...Hurst Anderson, President of American University, and Judge R. V. Fletcher, the 87-year-old Chairman of its Board of Trustees, listened sympathetically to Fuchs's story...

...The law school's chapter of Sigma Nu Theta fraternity, in a letter to the University President, applauded the latter's original defense of Fuchs's right to teach and declared that his services "have been characterized by a depth of understanding and an unusual patience...

...When the Committee met, President Anderson presented the charges against Fuchs while the latter waited outside...

...The policy of the Harvard Corporation seems to me to be much more valid than the policy which your university has adopted...

...But on July 10 a Committee leak led to publication of a comprehensive account of his testimony in the Washington Star...

...Adam Yarmolinsky...

...all part-time teachers at American Universitys law school...

...The Bishop's admirers await his word...

...Six weeks later, on October 29, at a meeting attended by Bishop Oxnam, the Board of Trustees unanimously confirmed the action taken by the Executive Committee...

...It expressed their apprehension that "unless the action recommended by the Executive Committee is publicly justified on grounds other than those we have seen, it may hurt the Washington College of Law and the American University in the eyes of the legal profession, the law schools, the student body and the public...

...Yet, at the Board meeting which Bishop Oxnam did attend, he presumably participated in the unanimous vote approving Fuchs's dismissal...

...On June 13...

...In a telegram to President Anderson, Diana Trilling, Chairman of the Board of the ACCF, declared that "unless further information is forthcoming, we can draw no other conclusion except that the University is punishing Fuchs for cooperating fully with a Congressional agency-exposing Communist infiltration in the American Government...

...Because of his experience with Communist-front groups and Congressional committees, it was hoped that Bishop Oxnam would attend the meeting of the University's Executive Committee called to settle Fuchs's fate...

...Thus far, Bishop Oxnam has not seen fit to reply to the charge, made publicly by Congressman Gordon Scherer, that it was he who was responsible for the reversal of the University's earlier decision to defend Fuchs's right to teach...

...The last two have joined in asking the Board of Trustees to reconsider its action, or at least to clarify the reasons for its stand...

...Promptly, the University sprang to Fuchs's defense...

...The ACCF's official protest has been reinforced by several individual members of the organization, among them Reinhold Niebuhr...

...It was true, he said, that from 1934 to 1946, while employed by the National Labor Relations Board in Washington and Denver, he had been a member of the Communist party...

...on grounds of personal ethics, was inclined to question this course...

...Until then he had been known to his colleagues on the law faculty of American University in Washington, D. C. only as a mild professor, erudite in the law and liked by his students...

...Replying to questions posed by the ACCF, Congressman Francis E. Walter, Chairman of the Committee, telegraphed: "The hearings in the course of which Professor Fuchs testified have been fruitful, and in large measure their success has been due to his patriotic cooperation...

...The Communists delight in pointing out that admission of prior Communist party membership will be followed by economic reprisals, with the view to suppressing testimony adverse to the interests of the Communist party...

...The next day, only four days after the Uni-versity had publicly defended Fuchs's right to teach, he was peremptorily summoned to meet with the President and the Chairman of the Board...

...At this conference, according to Fuchs, he was roundly denounced by Judge Fletcher as "a Communist who had taken the Government's bread and betrayed it...

...The Fuchs case has also aroused the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure of the Association of American Law Schools, the American Civil Liberties Union, and the American Committee for Cultural Freedom...

...If the Board voted to re-employ Fuchs, Judge Fletcher said he would immediately resign...

...In an interview with Irving Fer-man, Washington ACLU representative, and myself, Judge Fletcher declared that he did not believe American University should employ any person with an extended record of Communist activity in Government...

...President Anderson ordered him to apply for a leave of absence, the alternative being summary dismissal...

...On June 13, his subpoena read, he was to appear before the House Un-American Activities Committee...

...The day before the Board of Trustees met...

...it received a joint letter from Leon Lipson...

...who wrote to President Anderson: "I would like to challenge this decision on moral grounds...

...It is expected to act on the joint request of the ACLU and the ACCF that it reconsider the Fuchs case, make public the minutes of the Executive Committee session which heard Fuchs and voted to dismiss him, and clarify its position on the issues of fact and policy which have been raised by its action and by the public statements of the University's officers...