Inviting Communists to Speak at Colleges.

Considerable ‘publicity has recently been given to the withdrawal by Yale’s Political Union of an invitation to Governor George Wallace of Alabama to address it. Exactly a year before, the PU had invited Gus Hall, Secretary of the Communist Party, USA, to address it. The previously scheduled speaker was William Buck-ley who, when he heard that Hall was to follow him, agreed to appear only on the condition that the PU address itself, on the night he spoke, specifically to the question whether to confirm the invitation to Hall, and vote on the question after Buckley’s speech. The text of his address follows. After the ensuing debate, by a narrow vote, the PU withdrew its invitation to Hall. There is, Buckley maintains, a significant difference between an invitation to a Communist Party leader and a Southern segregationist….

Last spring, Dr. John Meng addressed a letter to his faculty. Dr. Meng is the president of Hunter College, a political scientist by training, and a man well known for his Liberal views. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he wrote, and I quote the letter almost in its entirety, “a properly chartered student organization… complying with all the requirements established by the Faculty Council and by the Office of the Dean of Students… has organized a series of… forums under the general title ‘Out of the Mainstream.’ The first two of these forums, scheduled for April 11 and May 2, are to be addressed by George Lincoln Rockwell, self-styled Commander of the American Nazi Party, and by Gus Hall, General Secretary of the Communist Party, U.S.A…. Student sentiment on the… campus with regard to the propriety of these invitations is sharply divided… Students on both sides of the controversy agree in expressing detestation for the doctrines professed by the… two invited speakers. What the students are arguing about is whether they have properly assumed the responsibility which is theirs as a result of the freedom accorded them by the College…. Those of us who remember the Second World War, the horrors of Nazism, and the cruelties of Communism on the march, tend to forget that these memories are not a part of the mental equipment of most of our present student body. Their knowledge of those events is largely knowledge transmitted by an older generation or through the medium of historical accounts. It is not surprising that many of them should evince some intellectual interest in listening to a living, avowed Nazi or to an openly-dedicated Communist speaking in the American idiom.

About the Author

William F. Buckley Jr.

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

Featured Tags

William F. Buckley Jr.

Alabama

Considerable ‘publicity has recently been given to the withdrawal by Yale’s Political Union of an invitation to Governor George Wallace of Alabama to address it. Exactly a year before, the PU had invited Gus Hall, Secretary of the Communist Party, USA, to address it. The previously scheduled speaker was William Buck-ley who, when he heard that Hall was to follow him, agreed to appear only on the condition that the PU address itself, on the night he spoke, specifically to the question whether to confirm the invitation to Hall, and vote on the question after Buckley’s speech. The text of his address follows. After the ensuing debate, by a narrow vote, the PU withdrew its invitation to Hall. There is, Buckley maintains, a significant difference between an invitation to a Communist Party leader and a Southern segregationist….

Last spring, Dr. John Meng addressed a letter to his faculty. Dr. Meng is the president of Hunter College, a political scientist by training, and a man well known for his Liberal views. “Ladies and gentlemen,” he wrote, and I quote the letter almost in its entirety, “a properly chartered student organization… complying with all the requirements established by the Faculty Council and by the Office of the Dean of Students… has organized a series of… forums under the general title ‘Out of the Mainstream.’ The first two of these forums, scheduled for April 11 and May 2, are to be addressed by George Lincoln Rockwell, self-styled Commander of the American Nazi Party, and by Gus Hall, General Secretary of the Communist Party, U.S.A…. Student sentiment on the… campus with regard to the propriety of these invitations is sharply divided… Students on both sides of the controversy agree in expressing detestation for the doctrines professed by the… two invited speakers. What the students are arguing about is whether they have properly assumed the responsibility which is theirs as a result of the freedom accorded them by the College…. Those of us who remember the Second World War, the horrors of Nazism, and the cruelties of Communism on the march, tend to forget that these memories are not a part of the mental equipment of most of our present student body. Their knowledge of those events is largely knowledge transmitted by an older generation or through the medium of historical accounts. It is not surprising that many of them should evince some intellectual interest in listening to a living, avowed Nazi or to an openly-dedicated Communist speaking in the American idiom.