Please Note Our Highmindedness

Last week Whitney Griswold and Nathan Pusey, havening synchronized their watches and started their countdown over the telephone the previous day (“. . . it was learned that the two presidents had talked the matter over by telephone yesterday,” said the AP dispatch) exploded their high-mindedness across the nation’s headlines by refusing, in behalf of Yale and Harvard students, further participation in the scholarship program of the National Defense Act of ,1958. Henceforward, said Mr. Griswold and Mr. Pusey in separate but equal statements, Yale and Harvard will not accept federal money for student loans so long as the law requires that students applying for such loans depose that they are not members of any organization which seeks to alter our form of government by force or violence.

As an act of principle, the gesture was off cue. Yale and Harvard have already received several hundred thousand dollars’ under the Act and, like Charles Van Doren, do not propose to give it back. Mr. Griswold made an, effort (unsuccessful, as far the Yale Daily News was coneerned) to deflect criticism of his belatedness by explaining carefully to Mr. Arthur Flemming, Secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, to whom he publicly addressed Yale’s resignation, that a whole year had gone by since Yale had publicly stated its objections to the loyalty oath and intimated the terms under which it would continue to receive federal money—a whole year, and nothing was done by Congress to remove the offensive oath. Clearly Mr. Gris-wold’s patience had come to an end. Neither he nor Mr. Pusey had withdrawn in August of 1959, when the Senate of the United States explicitly declined, by a vote of 49 to 42, to amend the Act to remove the loyalty oath. They waited until November, i.e., until after student registration, when most of the loans are formally contracted. A little like telling the boss on the 26th of December, having banked your Christmas bonus, that you are quitting because you found out what an intolerable swine he was in October. Other colleges and universities, e.g., Oberlin, Ha ver ford, Princeton, Swarthmore, stuck by their principles from the beginning, ref using, from the beginning, to. participate in the program.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

William F. Buckley Jr. founded National Review magazine in 1955.

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William F. Buckley Jr.

Last week Whitney Griswold and Nathan Pusey, havening synchronized their watches and started their countdown over the telephone the previous day (“. . . it was learned that the two presidents had talked the matter over by telephone yesterday,” said the AP dispatch) exploded their high-mindedness across the nation’s headlines by refusing, in behalf of Yale and Harvard students, further participation in the scholarship program of the National Defense Act of ,1958. Henceforward, said Mr. Griswold and Mr. Pusey in separate but equal statements, Yale and Harvard will not accept federal money for student loans so long as the law requires that students applying for such loans depose that they are not members of any organization which seeks to alter our form of government by force or violence.

As an act of principle, the gesture was off cue. Yale and Harvard have already received several hundred thousand dollars’ under the Act and, like Charles Van Doren, do not propose to give it back. Mr. Griswold made an, effort (unsuccessful, as far the Yale Daily News was coneerned) to deflect criticism of his belatedness by explaining carefully to Mr. Arthur Flemming, Secretary of the Department of Health, Education and Welfare, to whom he publicly addressed Yale’s resignation, that a whole year had gone by since Yale had publicly stated its objections to the loyalty oath and intimated the terms under which it would continue to receive federal money—a whole year, and nothing was done by Congress to remove the offensive oath. Clearly Mr. Gris-wold’s patience had come to an end. Neither he nor Mr. Pusey had withdrawn in August of 1959, when the Senate of the United States explicitly declined, by a vote of 49 to 42, to amend the Act to remove the loyalty oath. They waited until November, i.e., until after student registration, when most of the loans are formally contracted. A little like telling the boss on the 26th of December, having banked your Christmas bonus, that you are quitting because you found out what an intolerable swine he was in October. Other colleges and universities, e.g., Oberlin, Ha ver ford, Princeton, Swarthmore, stuck by their principles from the beginning, ref using, from the beginning, to. participate in the program.