Schlesinger Defends 'Vital Center'

Herbert Aptheker, the associate editor of "Masses & Mainstream," who last month called Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr., associate professor of History, a fraud is an article in his magazine, will reiterate this charge verbally at a John Reed Club forum at 7:45 p.m. tonight in Emerson D.

Schlesinger will be on hand to defend his position in the debate entitled "The Center and the Left."

An instructor of History at the Jefferson School of Social Science in New York, Aptheker in his October article in "Masses & Mainstream" called Schlesinger a "bourgeois-begotten- natured and bound intellectual. . . unrestrained even by the fetters on misquotation."

Aptheker based his charges primarily on the basis of the content of Schlesinger's latest book, "The Vital Center," which suggest a common ground for political action by moderate conservatives and moderate liberals. Aptheker, called Schlesinger's position a program groomed to the needs of a rolling class seeking war and fascism."