Is There a Statute of Limitations on Justice?

Thirty five years later and Arthur Kraus is still seeking vindication for the unusual crime of being a premature .anti-Fascist He came into my office at Life Maga- zine in 1948. As a congenital hater of the committee work that seems inseparable from causes, I tried to fend him off when he asked for two hours of my time. But there was something in the man’s attitude, a hint of rueful humor in his anguish, that made me think that here was the classic case, a seeming victim of persecution mania who had really been persecuted. “Who Expects Justice?’ The man standing before me had, in effect, been victimized in the early Thirties for being a premature anti- Fascist. Since I had many friends who had been hurt for being prematurely anti-Communist, I would sympathize with his complaints about timing as related to crusades. A committee headed by Dr. John Dewey had found the College of the City of New York remiss in. firing: him im 1933; Dr. Albert Einstein had made an appeal for him by saying, “Listen to what he says; he speaks the truth’; Pro- fessor Wesley Mitchell, Columbia Uni- versity economist, had praised his ‘indomitable perseverance.” Plainly, here was a man who could move men, even though he might seem to be seeking justice on a self-serving basis. What especially outraged me about the case of Dr. Arthur J. Kraus was not that he had been deprived of a teaching post which, although it still had a contractual period to run, did not carry permanent tenure. After all, such miscarriages of justice, if they are such, are not uncommon. I tried to tell Dr. Kraus that he was paying a stupid humanity too great a compliment in bothering to fight for justice to himself. As Rexford Tugwell had said in an appealing moment when his reputation was be- ing smirched by political opponents, “Who expects justice?” But when Dr. IS THERE A STATUTE OF LIMITATIONS | ON JUSTICE? JOHN CHAMBERLAIN Kraus went into detail about what had been done to him, I felt as outraged as he did. For the sancti- monious people who had plowed him — under at City College had been Indian givers, which, in my book, put them with the lowest of the low among human animals. In April of 1949 I chaired a fact- finding committee at Christian Herald House in New York City. Dr. Kraus’ attorney of record was the well- known Nuremberg trial prosecutor, John Harlan Amen. Skilfully he put the Kraus story on the record. Dr. Kraus had been educated at the Uni- versity of Cracow in Poland, the Uni- versity of Berlin (where he got his doctorate), and the University of Chi- cago (where he published his book, Sick Society). He had later studied at Balliol College, Oxford. As a teacher at City College in 1932-1933 he talked against isolationism, argu- ing that it would only help the.rise of Fascism in his native Poland as well as in Germany. Seeking a peace- ful way of dramatizing his views, Dr. Kraus received the approval of Presi- dent F. B. Robinson of City College to conduct a march of students from the College to Columbia University. But marches, in 1932, had not yet become the common coin of protest movements. When opposition to his A Ss Zar rte own job five years later for “lacking human qualities necessary to achieve the confidence of his faculty.” Dr. Kraus fired off telegrams to Mark Eisner, Chairman of the Board of Higher Education in New York City, and Charles . Tuttle,. Cham man of the City College Administra- tive Committee of the same board, protesting the “third degree” he had received. But the response of the City College authorities was to dismiss Dr. Kraus without a hearing, with no spe- cification of reasons, and without a payment of salary for the rest of his contract. Since Dr. Kraus had not yet become an American citizen, his loss of a job left him in danger of deportation, and he was actually placed under arrest and held for a time on Ellis Island. And all this for attempting to call attention to the dangers of Fascism. Issue.Not.Clear: ACLU : Since J. H. Amen put the results of numerous subsequent psychiatric examinations of Dr. Kraus on the record, all of which testified to his lack of any trace of mental unsound- ness, our 1949 fact-finding committee could only conclude that the City College authorities had struck out at { “we ii st te ge ; s us ‘ Fuld, Cee waa | fee Waresens ga Oe : een) |} ts » Wake /f se errr as Dies at 25) Gan ytd j QE eee] iy aie ip, Us, THUR a | a’ ‘i x ef Aes, Som M eee Np ij , mm aoe : 13H aS ee Ge ts Bay a Dr. Kraus because he had embar- rassed them. Immediately following his dismis- sal from the College Dr. Kraus called on the American Civil Liberties Union and made an issue of the alleged criminal assault upon his person by his supposed “psychiatric examiner.” The ACLU, however, denied him an investigation. According to his testi- mony, the ACLU suggested instead a migration to the Soviet Union with its help. Dr. Kraus’ answer to this was that he wanted no help from the Soviet Union. Later on the Civil Liberties Union announced that “no question of civil liberties or academic freedom was involved” in the Kraus case. When Professor John Dewey prodded the ACLU to reconsider, he was turned down. As a member of the Kraus Defense Committee of 1934, Professor Dewey reported that “hav- ing looked quite carefully into the case of Dr. Kraus and through the medium of an independent investiga- tion, I write to say that, in my judg- ment, Dr. Kraus’ summary dismissal from the City College of New York did him a marked injustice.” Despite three appeals to the ACLU Dr. Kraus has been tormented by the perennial question, “Have you seen the Am- erican Civil Liberties Union?” He sees no logic in Roger Baldwin’s statement for the ACLU that it is “not a case involving so clear an issue of Dr. Kraus’ views and political activities as to enable us to take it up.” The Teachers Union (now the United Federation of Teachers) followed the lead of the ACLU by denying any infringement of civil liberties and academic freedom. Curiously, the le- gal counsel for the ACLU was also the counsel for the Teachers Union. As this article is being written, the American Association of University Professors is still reviewing the case. The AAUP has had the case under review since the start, some thirty years ago. Our fact-finding committee, which listened to the orderly testi- mony as evoked by John Harlan Amen, consisted of Professors J. C. Bennet, of Union Theological Semi- nary, H. W. Schneider of the Colum- bia University Department of Philoso- phy, Chairman W. Warner of the De- partment of Sociology at New York University, Chairman S. L. Hamilton of the Department of Religious Edu- cation at New York University, J. W. McKenna of the New York University School of Law, and such non-aca- demicians as Clarence Hall, the Man- aging Editor of the Christian Herald, Golda E. Bader of the Executive Board of the United Council of Church Women, and myself. We of- fered a full report, including the evi- dence on the felonious assault, but the New York Board of Higher Edu- cation was unmoved. Unfortunately the hearing was a closed one. To the question “Where is the press?” a spokesman for the Christian Herald said he did not invite the press be- cause it would not have fully covered the hearing and would render the wrong impression to the public. Justice Deferred and Denied Indeed, there seems to be an im- palpable “statute of limitations” work- ing against Dr. Kraus. Justice de- ferred does, in fact, become justice denied. Unable to get a teaching job, Dr. Kraus has supported himself in a variety of ways, working at the Ford Motor Company during the war, selling encyclopedias, and lecturing, sometimes for payment, sometimes for what faculty groups in foreign coun- tries have been willing to collect for him. Since 1949 Dr. Kraus has been all over the world pursuing what, to date, has been a Quixotic attempt to get “world opinion” to force a re- opening of his case by making it an international scandal. Lord Chorley, the British humanist, has called Kraus “the most wronged man of our times.” Twelve Nobel Prize winners, a queen (Elisabeth of Belgium), and a score of academic, civic and church leaders from overseas recently signed an Open Letter to President Johnson asking an investigating committee. The 1966 Congress of International Humanist and Ethical Union, through its resolution on the Kraus case, has supported the Open Letter. But the Letter, after deposition at the U. 5S. Embassy in London, has been re- turned to Dr Kraus by. the U.S. State Department without comment. Dr. Kraus is, of course, too old now to teach. But decency demands some amends. You don’t slug a man behind locked doors, and refuse to pay him for contractual services, without caus- ing a scandal that should reverberate after 35 years. I say this despite my | own conviction that it is a waste of time to expect justice from Indian givers, a category which, sadly, in- cludes all too many in our educational establishment.