Word: feinberg
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...Feinberg Law decision affords an excellent illustration of this. Passed two years ago by the New York legislature, the Feinberg Law directs the Board of Regents to deny subversives--those who advocate violent overthrow of the government--the privilege of teaching in New York's public schools. It provides that, after full hearings, the Board of Regents may declare an organization subversive, and may refuse any member of that organization a teaching position. The basis for this law is that employment as a teacher places limits on freedom of thought and expression...
Early this week the Supreme Court upheld the Feinberg Law, and by this decision approved the doctrine behind it. The fact that there were three justices dissenting is enough to cast suspicions on the law as a legal effort, but it is primarily with the doctrine behind the act that we take issue...
...will investigate the company he keeps. In some cases where teaching involves interpretation of current affairs, economics, history and so forth, the teacher's beliefs may be important: no one committed to any extreme dogma is competent to teach such subjects. But this is not the rationale for the Feinberg Law. The Board of Regents will apply the guilt by membership theory to all teachers, whether it is relevant to their competency or not. So much for standards, then; there are deeper faults...
...matter how it is applied, the Feinberg Law will corrode the basic freedoms of opinion and expression. Many teachers will not join organizations that they fear have been or will be declared subversive, nor will they dare make statements that wander too far from the orthodoxy of the times. Even if the threat of expulsion is not very great, there is always the possibility of a hearing which is almost as unpleasant. Justice Douglas' dissent, which predicted a vertitable spy system growing up in the New York school system, is not so alarmist as it might appear at first reading...
Howe said that "the decision is premature, for we do not know how the Feinberg Law will be enforced, or what kind of hearings the individual suspect would be given...