When four New York City colleges banned author Howard Fast from speaking on their premises in December, 1947, they touched off a dispute over who may speak when and where in New York universities, a dispute which even now is disturbing the Brooklyn College campus.

Fast was one of the 18 members of the Executive Board of the Joint Anti-Fascist Refugee Committee who were convicted for contempt of Congress because they would not show their books and records to the House un-American Activities Committee.

On June 27, 1947, a Federal court convicted Fast and his 17 associates of contempt and sentenced them each to three months in jail and a $500 fine. The case was immediately appealed, and the 18 were released on bail.

Through what Columbia Provost Albert C. Jacobs called "administrative oversight," Fast was given permission to speak on the campus on October 4.

Two months later Provost Jacobs said Fast would not be allowed to make a scheduled speech before the P.C.A. on December 12. Columbia's policy, Jacobs said, was not to allow men under sentence or indictment to speak at the University.

Columbia Groups Protest

A large number of Columbia groups protested this decision. The P.C.A. called it a "complete break with the liberal traditions of American education," and noted that Professor Lyman Bradley, convicted with Fast for contempt, had been allowed to speak at Columbia in the summer of 1947.

The Columbia (daily) Spectator said, "The pressure of the un-American Activities Committee has already begun to take effect on the Columbia campus." The student council, Americans for Democratic Action, and the American Veterans Committee asked that the ban be revised.

A few days later Brooklyn College President Harry D. Gideonse banned Fast from a Karl Marx Society speech because of a college policy of "refusing permission to speak on the campus to any person whose conduct is under judicial consideration."

But at Brooklyn, as at Columbia, opponents of the ban were quick to point out that Lyman Bradley had given a speech several weeks before, under the auspices of two Brooklyn College groups.

Then Fast was stopped at City College. Dean John J. Theobald gave the same reasons presented by Columbia and Brooklyn.

Fast was not the only speaker banned at C.C.N.Y. On December 9, Theobald said "no" to a speech by Arnold Johnson, legislative representative of the Communist Party, because Johnson's party appeared on Attorney-General Clark's list of subversive organizations. The Student-Faculty Committee on Student Organizations upheld the ban. It said Johnson's speech would be "detrimental to the college," though it stated that Johnson could speak to any one group in a closed meeting.

There was a strong reaction here, too. City College students held a noon protest rally on December 11, and the daily Campus attacked the action in an editorial.

The American Civil Liberties Union stated, "No proper relation exists between the Attorney-General's blacklist, on which Mr. Johnson's exclusion was based, and the standards for selecting speakers to college groups."

Two days later, C.C.N.Y. violated its own rule, perhaps unconsciously. It permitted an official of the American Youth for Democracy to give a speech. The A.Y.D., like the Communist Party, is on the Attorney-General's "subversive" list.