Word: branscombe
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...bitter fight that has split Nashville's Vanderbilt University since the expulsion of Negro Divinity Student James M. Lawson Jr. for promoting sit-in demonstrations finally simmered down last week. After many abortive efforts. Chancellor Harvie Branscomb arranged a compromise that brought a truce, though an uneasy one to the campus. Lawson, who is now finishing his last three courses at Boston University, may earn his B.D. degree from Vanderbilt by either transferring credits from Boston or by taking a written exam this summer. The school has already replaced Divinity School Dean J. Robert Nelson, whose initial resignation touched...
Ironically, Vanderbilt is one of the South's most integrated campuses. A Southern liberal, Chancellor Branscomb persuaded his conservative board of trust to admit Negroes in 1953, and he is personally sympathetic to the sit-in strikers' goals. But "civil disobedience'' is something else again. Branscomb firmly believes that whites and Negroes must equally obey the law-or face race riots. And at the height of the sit-in tension, Lawson told city officials: "The law has been a gimmick to manipulate the Negro...
...Boston. Asked to explain whether he was encouraging Negroes to "violate the law," Lawson told Branscomb: "When the Christian considers the concept of civil disobedience as an aspect of nonviolence, it is only within the context of a law or a law-enforcement agency which in reality has ceased to be the law." Unable to accept this reasoning. Branscomb asked Lawson to leave Vanderbilt. He refused-and Branscomb expelled...
...quarter of the university faculty (112 professors) signed a petition supporting Lawson. When he was arrested for conspiracy to restrain trade and commerce, the divinity-school faculty chipped in $500 for bail. The faculty stirred such a fuss that Dean Nelson set about readmitting Lawson. But last week Chancellor Branscomb vetoed the idea, and Nelson quit...
...schools in the U.S." His job was offered to Dean Walter J. Harrelson of the University of Chicago divinity school. If Harrelson accepts, it may be under certain conditions that might even include the readmission of Lawson and the retention of Nelson as a professor. Whatever the outcome. Chancellor Branscomb is adamant on one point. "We are a university in the South trying to find a way," said he. "But we will not tolerate civil disobedience...