Decision at Harvard

U.S. colleges and universities may be pretty well agreed that they want no Communists on their faculties, but one question still divides them: Should a teacher be fired for refusing to answer the questions of congressional investigators on the ground that his answers might incriminate him? Last week, after reviewing three such cases, Harvard answered no. Though it "deplored" invoking the Fifth Amendment as "entirely inconsistent with the candor to be expected of one devoted to the pursuit of truth," it did not consider it an automatic reason for dismissal. The three cases involved:

Physicist Wendell H. Furry, who refused to tell the Velde committee whether he had been a Communist before March 1, 1951. Actually, said the Corporation, he was a member until 1947. Even so, he "at no time permitted his connection with the party to affect his teaching, nor has he attempted otherwise to influence the political thinking of his students." One incident, however, did seem "grave misconduct" in the Corporation's eyes: as an officer of the American Association of Scientific Workers, "he told an investigating agent in 1944 that he had no reason to believe an applicant for a position for classified Government work had been a member of the Communist Party, although Dr. Furry knew the applicant had been." Concluded the Corporation: ". . . Particularly in view of the fact that this incident occurred nine years ago in a very different climate of political opinion," it would not fire Furry. Instead, it was leaving its "finding of grave misconduct in full effect for a period of three years."

Leon J. Kamin, a teaching fellow in the department of social relations, who told the Jenner subcommittee that he is not now a member of the Communist Party, but refused to say whether he ever had been one. After investigating Kamin for itself, Harvard found that he joined the party while still a student in 1945, wrote for the Daily Worker under the name Leo Soft. In 1950, however, he had a change of heart, since then has had no connection--with the party. "Mr. Kamin," said the Corporation, "has not been under Communist domination since he first became a teacher in 1951."

Helen Deane Markham, assistant professor of anatomy, who refused to tell the Jenner subcommittee anything at all about her relation to the party. The Corporation's findings: though she once taught a biology course at the Communist-run Samuel Adams School in Boston. Dr. Markham was never actually in the party. "We regret," said Harvard, "that Dr. Markham did not see fit to supplement the official record before the committee to this effect, but we do not regard that as controlling."

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