BROWDER VERSUS THE CORPORATION

Harvard's supreme command, the Corporation, has acted to sustain the Browder ban, and its decision must be branded as unwise to the point of being inconsistent with the University's best interests. It is all very well to project an investigation which will explore the general question of the use of Harvard buildings by non-official organizations. But there are no logical grounds, dreamed or spoken, for prefacing this investigation by a move such as the refusal to grant to the Communist leader the right to appear here.

The mere fact that the Corporation will conduct its enquiry means that at the present time no criteria for the use of halls exist. If this is so, however, Browder has been excluded without reason. Certainly the Corporation fails to specify any reason--unless by inference it is resting its case on the weak excuse previously advanced by Mr. Greene. In the absence of any verbal justification of the action, the suspicion grows that Browder is a persona non grata to Harvard authorities for more reasons than his passport peccadilloes.

What kind of criteria will be set up is a subject for uninformed conjecture. The tenor of the words used in the statement would seem to imply that public figures to whom any unpleasant notoriety attaches, or who stand at the center of heated non-academic controversies will be banned from Harvard. The motive behind the establishment of this or any other standard would be to ward off possible unfavorable publicity. Certainly it could not be to prevent the perversion of students' minds.

But if the avoidance of publicity is the ultimate aim of the Corporation, it has acted with a considerable lack of canniness at this juncture. If Browder had spoken to Harvard students as a thrice convicted murderer, the University would not have received more publicity than it is attracting at the present time. The Liberals of the nations are on the war-path, and it is hard to see how the Corporation could have ignored this.