Dear Editor
DEAR EDITOR DEMON RUM If William E. Bohn's "Home Front" column of May 7, which discusses Upton Sinclair's new book Cup of Fury, fairly represents the profundity of his social conscience and extent...
...On the second question, Dr...
...Hook's concluding sentence, quoted above, which plainly calls for "automatic" dismissal of CP members...
...That it is a fact I, like Dr...
...Carrying that editorial principle down the line, I suppose this liberal weekly will now solicit a piece from Frank Costello on the income tax, from Captain Bradley on the situation in American labor, and from Mickey Spillanc on American literature...
...I asked the Editor if, for a special issue on McCarthyism, he would solicit an article by, say, Fulton Lewis Jr., who has been as much 1 spokesman for McCarthyism as Ehrenburg for Stalinism...
...NL, June 11], John H. Lichtblau says that the USSR shipped "11 million tons of gold to Iran in settlement of a debt" in 1955...
...One ton equals $840,000...
...I should perhaps explain that I cannot myself make such a motion because emeriti are (wisely, perhaps) excluded from the privileges of active membership...
...Fuchs, in a conciliatory spirit, seeks to show that the position on the question of principle expressed in the Special Committee's report is really the same as Dr...
...It was especially so in Buffalo, where, on June 7, the Ambassador from Ceylon, speaking under the auspices of the Buffalo Council on World Affairs, made a very able and vigorous argument for the admission of Communist China to the UN...
...It does not even show which of these views he actually holds (he certainly does not hold both), and it does nothing to rebut his strictures on the Special Committee report...
...The pages of the Bulletin'' he writes me, "are not closed to a point of view different from the Association's," and "I contemplate the possibility of an article or articles expressing both [Professor Hook's] point of view and that which the Annual Meeting has adopted on the basis of the Special Committee's report...
...Fuchs clearly scores a point here, for this admission is undeniably inconsistent with Dr...
...but I am assured by Dr...
...Buffalo, N. Y. C. I. Claflin...
...Especially if, for instance, the reader is naive enough to accept Robert Burns as evidence that drinking doesn't really hurt anybody ?at least not much...
...Arthur O. Lovejoy FIGHTING COMMUNISM When the New Republic was preparing its June 11 special issue on "The Soviet Union Since Stalin," it solicited an article on the subject from unrepentant Stalinist Ilya Ehrenburg...
...Hook's real answer to the first question is obviously stated in the concluding sentence of his May 21 article, "The AAUP and Academic Integrity'' (quoted by him from the declaration of the New School for Social Research): "A member of any political party or group which asserts the right to dictate in matters of science or scientific opinion is not free to teach the truth and is thereby disqualified as a teacher.'' For the acceptance--or reaffirmation --of this principle by the Association he presents, in my opinion, entirely sound and adequate reasons...
...The occasion for this report was the current tendency among hysterical persons and reactionary politicians to represent all academic teachers whose political affiliations have even the slightest tinge of "liberalism" as "Communist sympathizers"--and thereby to frighten them into silence...
...Dr...
...Hook himself suggests...
...Hook charges that the Special Committee's report not only fails to reaffirm that principle unequivocally, but even asserts what seems to him its opposite: that nothing can "justify the proscription- of individuals, unless these persons were knowingly participants in criminal acts or conspiracies, in either the past or the present...
...Pierre Aubeuf In the discussion in your June 25 "Dear Editor" column between Professor Sidney Hook and Dr...
...Hook's admission that "membership in an organization'' such as the Communist party "should not be an automatic ground for dismissal," but should only "constitute a presumption of unfitness...
...But I assume that these unfortunate passages in the report are due to simple, though surprising, ignorance of the actual policy and methods of the Communist party--as Dr...
...On this question of feat about the present position of the Association Association...
...The following quotation, I believe, sums up his position: "A member of any political party or group which asserts the right to dictate in matters of science or scientific opinion is not free to teach the truth and thereby is disqualified as a teacher...
...But in their defense of the professional freedom and civil liberties of non-Communist teachers, the drafters, in some passages, have seemed willing also to permit the infiltration of the worst and most insidious conspirators against both academic freedom and civil liberties...
...The article should have read 11 tons, not 11 million tons.--Ed...
...Durham, N.C...
...The reply sidestepped a direct answer...
...He writes: "It has never permitted its members to discuss the issue fairly in the pages of its Bulletin, or to hear it debated by competent representatives of both sides before its annual meeting.'' That was, apparently, once true under a previous administration...
...Fuchs's argument is what it tells us indirectly about the AAUP's position as understood by its General Secretary, viz., that admitted or proved present membership in, or support of, a political party or group which asserts the right to dictate what its members may teach or write should not be considered ipso facto ("automatically") a disqualification for membership in a university faculty...
...The other concerns fact--what is that position, as formulated in the report of the Association's Committee on Academic Freedom in the Quest for National Security...
...Lancaster, Pa...
...1 hope, therefore, that, after such discussion, some member will move the reconsideration and amendment of that report and the adoption of a declaration on this issue equivalent in substance to that of the New School for Social Research...
...and Dr...
...ACADEMIC FREEDOM I read with care Sidney Hook's "The AAUP and Academic Integrity" [NL, May 21...
...That Dr...
...Fuchs appear to be in complete agreement...
...To this end, he quotes Dr...
...Hook, consider deplorable...
...I agree with this, but what about a devout Catholic who is not a priest and teaches in a non-Catholic institution...
...Washington, D. C. Fred Hurson This being the megaton age, we slipped...
...What is significant about Dr...
...Eleven tons equal $9,240,000...
...Ralph Fuchs, General Secretary of the American Association of University Professors, about, that organization's policy on the eligibility of Communist partly members for membership in university faculties,two distinct questions are involved...
...I do not believe that they really want to facilitate the admission of active CP members to the teaching staffs of their own or other universities...
...Fuchs that it is not true at present...
...DEAR EDITOR DEMON RUM If William E. Bohn's "Home Front" column of May 7, which discusses Upton Sinclair's new book Cup of Fury, fairly represents the profundity of his social conscience and extent of his information on so pressing a social problem as drinking, I'm afraid I shall have to look elsewhere for "leadership...
...One pound of gold equals $420...
...Hook The New Leader welcomes comment and criticism on any of its features, hut letters should not exceed 300 wards...
...It is, finally, important to note that, in one respect, Dr...
...Baltimore, Md...
...Hook apparently expresses two incompatible views on the main issue...
...But the point is a trivial one: It amounts merely to a dubious argument ad hominem, to show that Dr...
...I do not, however, attribute to the distinguished drafters of the report such dubious, not to say sinister, intentions as he appears to ascribe to them...
...It is the lack of anti-alcohol sentiment in the labor movement which makes some of us wonder whether its leaders are actually altruistic in their orientation...
...I was advised merely that the Editor had been interested in what Ilya Ehrenburg had to say on the subject...
...The report, I think it fair to assume, was designed as an exposure of and protest against this tendency...
...One has to do with principle--what should be the position of the Association on this issue...
...Hook's view (which is also mine) on the question of principle is identical with the Committee's is not a fact, as should be patent to every reader of his article as a whole...
...I also asked if, for a special issue on Peron, the Editor would solicit an article by a pro-Peron Argentine cultural figure...
...New York City Sol Stein ADMITTING RED CHINA Senator Paul H. Douglas's article, "Why the United Nations Should Bar Red China" [NL, June 11], was exceedingly timely...
...The USSR will certainly win the Gold War...
...John M. Gordon GOLD WAR In his article, "Will Moscow Launch a Gold War...
...Hook's...
...One million times that makes our Fort Knox hoard look like chicken feed...
...Gay old" books in praise of drinking are hardly sufficient source material...
...I am asking the CWA to invite Senator Douglas or someone else to present the other side...
...But I am not sanguine of the result, for the CWA seems to lean strongly toward the Mao side of the fence...
...Hook's information about the present policy of the AAUP is not up-to-date...
Vol. 39 • July 1956 • No. 27
