The Bans

A New York Herald Tribune newshen happened on the story. Last June, scanning a list of magazines to which New York City's public schools were subscribing for the year, she saw that the Nation, 83-year-old journal of opinion, was among the missing. A little digging uncovered what the board of school superintendents had not announced. The board had voted not to renew its 18 Nation subscriptions, on the ground that the weekly (circ. 42,000) had printed articles by Paul Blanshard, onetime New York City commissioner of accounts, criticizing the Catholic Church's stand on fascism, science and censorship of books and movies. The offending copies were yanked out of the school libraries.

Neighboring Newark had gone farther. Last winter, after an earlier series of Blanshard articles, the Nation had been removed from the libraries of Newark's four high schools by the school superintendent. When Nation Editor Freda Kirchwey protested, the Newark board of education (five Catholics, three Protestants, one Jew) unanimously backed the superintendent. In Trenton, N.J., school officials clipped the articles from the magazines before they were put in the libraries.

By last week, the controversy over the Nation had boiled up into a first-rate argument over freedom of the press. In the current issue of the Nation, 107 educators, lawyers, clergymen and writers, such as Reinhold Niebuhr, Sumner Welles, Publishers Palmer Hoyt, Mark Ethridge and Ralph McGill, signed "An Appeal to Reason and Conscience" demanding that the New York City board change its mind. New York City's School Superintendent William Jansen had defended the ban as "based on the long-established American tradition that religious discussions and criticism of religion have no place in the classroom of the public high school."

Countered the 107 petitioners: "Criticism of religion can certainly take forms which are unsuitable to schools . . . But the doctrine that the criticism of religion must be outlawed as such . . . has no justification ... If the suppression of the Nation ... is allowed to stand . . . the consequences to the schools, to the press, and to the vitality of American freedom may well be very serious indeed. Newspapers and periodicals will be obliged to omit news and comment which any group in any denomination, Catholic or other, regards as objectionable or run the risk of being suppressed in the public schools ..."

The issue would not be settled by open letters. Next month, the Nation would carry it to the New York State education department. Eventually, it might land in the courts.

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