. . . "President Conant's rejection of all the committee's conclusions except that on academic freedom and his curt refusal to reinstate the men are breathtaking. He takes the reasoned conclusions of men like Professors Ralph Barton Perry, Felix Frankfurter, W. S. Ferguson, Arthur M. Schlesinger, Kenneth B. Murdock, Howard Shapely, and treats them with a whimsical impatience that would scarcely be accorded to a letter to the editor in an undergraduate newspaper.

To follow the committee's recommendation, he says, "would be both unwise and impractical." Just that. And why? Because it would "reverse the President's basic policy." But it is exactly that "basic policy" and its applications that were the object of the committee's investigation and report.

Why would reinstatement be "unwise"? The President has himself, in appointing the committee, admitted "the existence of substantial doubt within the University as to the justice or wisdom of the university's action." Has the situation changed? And why "impractical??" Is it too late? Last year, in writing to the Board of Overseers about the committee of inquiry, the President said, "Since the appointments of Dr. Walsh and Dr. Sweezy run for two years, there is ample time for me to reopen their casts if the committee's report warrants it." Yet now he offers not a word to refute the committee's conclusions. His only comment is to take pride in the fact that the report regard Walsh and Sweezy as "men of real ability whose services were highly valued in this university--facts which have never been questioned by the department, the dean, or me." May we remind Mr. Conant than in his news release on April 6, 1937, he rested the decisions against both men "solely on grounds of teaching capacity and scholarly ability"?

. . . The committee itself has another report to submit, on the wider problem of tenure and teaching at Harvard. It is up to them and the faculty to make it clear that democracy is not merely an ornamental world for Commencement addresses. --The Nation