Legislator Educator

Under pressure from some local vigilantes, the Philadelphia Board of Education is threatening to revoke the full, four year scholarship it awarded to one Russel D. Stetler, now a Haverford sophomore.

Apparently Stetler, no longer the fair-haired youth of his high school days, has impugned the judgment of the Philadelphia School Board by supporting the South Vietnamese guerilla rebels. He and several friends (including a Westinghouse scholarship winner who placed second in the national contest) have organized what they call the Student Committee to Send Medical Aid to the Front of the Naional Liberation of South Vietnam.

Stetler's group is giving medical assistance to rebels who are fighting a regime which the U.S. government is supporting with military assistance. The Veterans of Foreign Wars may call Stetler's action un-American. But the courts must decide its legality.

Hopefully the Philadelphia School Board will not be cowed by the vigilantes. But the defense of academic freedom and civil liberties seems to require unusual courage, particularly when the issue concerns anyone even remotely connected with the far left wing.

Of course sit-ins and trips to Cuba are already trying the patience of school administrators across the country. Open intellectual inquiry and political action have their administrative pitfalls. But the limits of political freedom are properly defined by law; and boards of education should not play at being courts.