Provost's Purge

On University of California's main campus at Berkeley, across the bay from San Francisco, four student strike-leaders were pelted with eggs, tomatoes. The chairman of the County's Joint Americanism Committee revealed that for two months 22 student spies had been blacklisting student and faculty radicals at Berkeley. At nearby San Mateo Junior College four liberal student speakers from Berkeley were pummeled, jailed, sent home with orders to stay there. In neighboring Santa Clara County, officials of San Jose Junior College issued a call for student vigilantes. Santa Clara University expelled the editor of its student newspaper for expressing radical sympathies. Far to the south in Los Angeles, on University of California's No. 2 campus (University of California at Los Angeles),* an indignation meeting of 3,000 students manhandled a campus policeman, tossed him over a hedge. Riot squads shrieked down on the campus to find the crowd already dispersed. Few days later 200 athletes & hangers-on met by torch light in a drizzling rain to form the "U. C. L. A. Americans." pledged to crush campus radicalism ''by force if necessary."

With such outbreaks of noise and violence in the past fortnight the long agitation over University of California student radicalism came to a painful head. Small, sporadic outbursts of young liberalism have made Red-fearing citizens plague the University's President Robert Gordon Sproul with demands for investigation. Sproul the Educator shot back a stout defense of academic freedom. To students arriving for this year's session he boomed: "Learn about Communism, Socialism and every other 'ism' so that you may balance . . . one against the other, but don't be misled" (TIME, Oct. 8).

But Sproul the Administrator well knew that California's Legislature, about to meet in its biennial appropriations session, already felt none too friendly toward the University. At Berkeley he suppressed the troublemaking Social Problems Club, forbade student activity in the Merriam-Sinclair campaign. He was touring the State with soothing assurances of University loyalty when a bald, mild, solemn subordinate in Los Angeles set off last fortnight's fireworks.

Even in California. Provost Ernest Carroll Moore of U. C. L. A. is distinguished for his hypersensitiveness to Red. A one-time member of Los Angeles' Republican County Central Committee, he believes that on adult issues students should hold their tongues "until they have mastered the tools which the race has found indispensable." Last fortnight he shocked and startled the State by declaring that his campus had become "one of the worst hotbeds of Communism in the U. S."

Without consulting President Sproul, who is charged with full responsibility for University of California student discipline. Provost Moore took mighty measures to root out the plague. From the University for one year he suspended five student leaders. Four were members of student council: John Burnside, president; Sidney Zsagri, forensic chairman; Thomas Lambert, men's board chairman; Mendel Lieberman, scholarship chairman. Fifth was Celeste Strack, Phi Beta Kappa and champion debater. The four councilmen, charged the Provost had been "using their offices to destroy the University by handing it over to an organized group of Communists.

After these strong words the worst menace the Provost could produce was the local chapter of National Students League. A pinko organization which maintains a small, noisy existence on many a U. S. campus, the League devotes itself chiefly to crying down compulsory military training. At U. C. L. A. it has about 20 members.

Crisis which precipitated the Provost's purge was a proposal for a student open forum, with the immediate purpose of talking over the State campaign. Provost Moore forbade the forum. The student council meekly tabled the proposal. But the jittery Provost suspected four councilmen of plotting with Celeste Strack and other Student Leaguers to carry out the plan.

Abashed by the uproar he had produced, Provost Moore soon invited the four councilmen back to his fold. But there were strings to the offer and the councilmen declined. Declared they: "We are not Communists . . . nor have we ever used our offices for the purpose of furthering the program of any radical organization. . . . We feel an intense loyalty and pride in our University, and are anxious for reinstatement -- but only as full-fledged American members of a truly American University."

At that distracted Provost Moore tossed the whole affair up to his highly embarrassed superior, President Sproul. Last week President Sproul arrived grim-faced in Los Angeles to begin a thoroughgoing investigation. Said he: "I want to get at the underlying truth of the entire question, which at present is not altogether clear to me."

* Othcr University of California branches are at San Francisco, La Jolla, Davis, Mt. Hamilton.

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