Ruth Putnam Joins PL Party Soon After Her Husband Quits

Three weeks after Hilary Putnam, professor of Philosophy, renounced his affiliation with the Progressive Labor party (PL), Ruth A. Putnam, his wife, joined the party's ranks.

However, Ruth Putnam, associate professor of Philosophy at Wellesley College, denied yesterday that her decision to join the revolutionary communist party was related to her husband's action.

"I joined PL because it is the most effective group working to bring about a just and socialist society," she said yesterday.

Hilary Putnam, who was the only tenured Faculty member in PL, left the party last December. He told The Crimson last Monday that he had been disenchanted with the party for some time and that he opposes its dogmatism.

Ruth Putnam refused to comment on her husband's resignation from PL. The 45-year-old specialist in political and moral philosophy, is now the first and only Wellesley professor in the Progressive Labor party.

One of her students said yesterday that Ruth Putnam is not typical of Wellesley professors in other ways. "She's not your average well-groomed Wellesley professor in tailored suits and neatly combed hair," a Wellesley sophomore said yesterday.

Putnam, who has been teaching at Wellesley for ten years, begins each term's classes by declaring herself a communist and telling her students that if they care to subscribe to the party newspaper, they should contact her, the student said.

"She doesn't impose her beliefs on her students, she merely states them," the student added.

Ruth Putnam left Germany and came to the United States in 1948. She received her Bachelor of Science and PhD at the University of California in Los Angeles.

In Boston, she has been active in the antiwar movement and the Cambridge rent control campaign. Putnam said that PL is the only political party she has ever joined.