Word: oaths
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 1950-1959
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Although the loyalty provision of the National Defense Education Act may appear harmless to many, the University's opposition to the loyalty oath involves much more than mere academic quibbling. The loyalty provisions now in the NDEA (Section 1001f) meet no clear and present security danger, but form instead a perilous restriction on academic autonomy and civil freedoms...
...arguments against the loyalty provision, and especially against the included affidavit requirement have been thoroughly presented. In outline, opponents of the oath contend the following: First, loyalty affidavits are useless, since true conspirators would not hesitate to sign them; second, the oath and affidavit single out the academic profession and young students as a group whose loyalty is suspect; third, the affidavit is dangerously vague and demands that applicants for funds must have beliefs that conform to an undefined and variable norm of safe political thinking. Finally, the affidavit and oath serve as dangerous precedent for burdening future governmental...
...chance that legislative action would remove the affidavit requirement, it accepted the funds; but since this hope has at least temporarily vanished, strategy has had to be changed. Obviously, the University, as well as other schools and academic associations should support new legislation that attempts to remove the oath. Last year, Harvard's ambivalent attitude was cited in Congress as a part of an argument that the loyalty oath was acceptable to even the best schools; but clear support of measures to remove the oath, coupled with a firm refusal to accept funds so long as it is required, should...
Professor Mark DeWolfe Howe has offered a new tactical course. He has suggested that the University could invite a government suit by administering the federal loans without requiring a loyalty oath. In such a suit, he argues, there is a good chance that the courts would strike down the loyalty provisions of the bill...
...central issues of the dispute. Finally, even if the government did sue to recover misspent funds, a complex financial imbroglio could result, for students who get NDEA funds need pay back only half the loan if they enter teaching. Thus, if the University administered these loans without the oath and were then enjoined to return the funds to the government, full restitution would be necessary. And students who had borrowed with the intention of repaying only fifty per cent of their loans would either have to refund the full amount, or the University would have to make up the other...