Word: communist
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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This statement in itself is commendable. There are innumerable cases where anti-Communist programs have ended up as assaults upon radicals and liberals. But how is the Commission's own policy to be carried out, and who is to carry it out? These are questions of the utmost importance, and yet the Commission has disregarded them. Are the agents to be state legislatures? This country has seen how consistently these "little dies Committees" have ignored the distinction between Communists and non-Communists. Are the agents to be college administrators or trustees or school superintendants? These people are often as sensitive...
President Conant has at last clearly stated his position on the issue of the right of Communists to teach in American schools and colleges. Members of the Communist Party of the United States should not be employed as teachers. Such membership . . . involves adherence to doctrines and discipline completely inconsistent with the principles of freedom on which American education depends. Such membership, and the accompanying surrender of intellectual integrity, render an individual unfit to discharge the duties of a teacher in this country...
...CRIMSON believes that membership in the Communist Party does not automatically "render an individual unfit to discharge the duties of a teacher." First, there is proof that many Communist card-holders are not required to follow the party line. In order to keep many "big names" in the party, the Communists do not demand blind obedience to party policies. Second, even if all Communists surrendered their "intellectual integrity," there are large areas of learning where politics is completely irrelevant. An ardent party-liner in the field of government is one thing--his dogma could well make him incompetent to teach...
...CRIMSON believes that competence along should be the standard for hiring or firing a teacher. A political standard is irrelevant; it is dangerous; it is a repudiation of the traditional American principle that in individual be judged for what he is, and not for what he belongs to. The communist Party is still a legal organization...
...Commission's report is a policy statement. It does not discuss ways and means of preventing the employment of Communists as teachers. Yet such "implementation" is a logical second step. The Commission feels strongly that Communists should be kept out of education; the Commission also condemns the "unjust use of such words as 'Red' and 'Communist' to attack teachers and other persons who in point of fact are not communists, but who merely have views different from those of their accusers...