Word: libeler
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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Senator McCarthy picked last week to withdraw his $2,000,000 libel and slander suit against Connecticut's former Democratic Senator William Benton, who in 1952, after charging that McCarthy had engaged in deceit and was not fit to serve in the Senate, waived his senatorial immunity to Joe's libel suit...
This continual battering creates a dilemma for the University administration. It can fight back, vigorously denying the charges and in some cases suing for libel, or it can maintain the traditional Harvard air of detachment. In the past it has chosen the latter course, but recent attacks by McCarthy and other self-appointed red hunters again pose the problem of how to deal with slurs most effectively...
...whole, Rushmore is super-cautions, making few of the accusations himself and dealing only in veiled insinuation. He firsts with libel without actually opening himself to suit. But at one point he does slip badly. Late in the article he boldly announces, "There is an organized Communist movement at Harvard," using for evidence only the testimony of former FBI undercover agent Herb Philbrick and former Communist Bella Dodd that there was a cell of professors here during the 1930's and '40's. The earlier existence of cells is now recognized as a fact, but it would be difficult...
This slip is genuine libel. The libel laws provide that defamatory criticism of educational institutions--including the quality, character and method of their instruction--is permitted since they are institutions in which the public has a "substantial interest." But it also provides that such defamatory criticism, that is criticism which holds the institution up to "ridicule, hatred or contempt," must be based on true facts. The burden of truth lies with the defendant in the libel suit...
...University is faced with this choice. It either can sit by and allow the libel to go unchallenged or it can bring the case to court and thus bring the issue of Communism at Harvard into the newspapers again. Since Rushmore would be forced to try to prove his statement, Harvard would be giving him a golden opportunity to circulate more ill-founded rumors on the "Red movement" at Harvard. For just this reason, the Corporation's policy during the past 15 years has been to ignore such articles, reasoning that the resultant publicity from a libel suit would...