Won't Teach at College Firing 'Reds', Says Aiken

Because University of Washington officials have "violated the principle of academic freedom" in their dismissal of two faculty members on the grounds of membership in the Communist Party, Associate Professor Henry D. Aiken has declined to teach at that institution's summer school.

The young member of the Philosophy Department here refused a proffered summer appointment after Washington's president Raymond B. Allen, dismissed two members of his faculty over the objections of the University Senate. That group is the schools court of appeal in cases involving academic freedom and problems of tenure.

'Self-Regulating Corporation'

Citing President Conant's last annual report, Aiken said last night, "The whole notion of a free university is that of a self-regulating corporate body." He maintained that the action of president Allen in the dismissal of English professor Joseph Butterworth and Herbert Phillips of the Philosophy Department, over the findings of fellow faculty members, violated that concept, and made it impossible for him to teach there.

Aiken, who was an associate of Phillips when he taught at the University of Washington in 1945, commented that "While I do not agree with Professor Phillips' political views, the primary matter is not the expression of any particular set of convictions, but academic independence."

The University Senate, after a state legislative committee's report had been discredited, questioned six faculty members, exonerating five of them, including Phillips and Butterworth. A sixth man was recommended for dismissal because he refused to answer questioning.

Allen recommended to the school's board of regents that Phillips and Butterworth be fired anyway, despite the faculty committee's findings.

"I do not say that academic freedom does not have conditions," Aiken said. "The University of Washington, however, did not state its restrictions in advance, and in its flrings it has violated the legal process."