The U.S. government, like a nervous and not too intelligent parent, has once more rapped the knuckles of an American college. In the case of Pierre Emmanuel, the State Department has usurped Wellesley's right to decide who shall teach its students.

Practically no one denies the government's right to lock America's doors against undesirable, unfit, or dangerous aliens. But who is undesirable? Is Emmanuel, whose position as an artist convinced two American colleges that he would be good for their students, undesirable?

Secretary Acheson's claim that Emmanuel cancelled his application before the consul could act doesn't tell the whole story. Acheson's assistants themselves state that Emmanuel was "found in-admissable under our laws." Although Emmanuel was never formally refused a visa, he almost certainly would have been unless the State Department's strategy was to stall him until he was forced to abandon voluntarily his U.S. trip.

A refusal would have been within the law. There are laws requiring that aliens who at any time have been affiliated with groups advocating the violent or forceful overthrow of the U.S. government "shall be excluded." This legislation, the State Department explains, "has been held to be applicable to persons who are or were members of or affiliated with the Communist Party." And Emmanuel's wartime position could technically be considered such affiliation.

But in Emmanuel's case, such an interpretation has led to a serious injustice. It is true that Emmanuel fought side by side with the Communists against the Nazis, but so did thousands of loyal Americans. It is true that Emmanuel tried to co-operate with the Communists immediately after the war, but the United Nations was trying to do the same thing. It is true that Emmanuel maintains personal relations with Communists. But in France, nearly one out of three voters vote Communist and a Communist in France is therefore not an outcast like his American comrade.

The charge--made openly to Emmanuel--that he is at least a Communist sympathizer, can be quashed. In recent articles, for instance, he has attacked the U.S.S.R. vehemently. He has written that Russia wants war, that the U.S. does not. Leading French Communist writers have attacked him viciously and sarcastically in print. But some U.S. officials apparently heard that Emmanuel did not agree with American foreign policy, and conceiving of no middle ground, accused him of being a Communist sympathizer and delayed or withheld his visa. By thus cutting down Wellesley's power to choose its own staff, and especially by hiding the reasons for its action, the State Department has exercised dangerous standards of desirability and fitness.

Within the year, two other colleges have had experiences like Wellesley's; thought control at the visa level has become a serious threat.

The first remedies for this sickly set-up are sanity and common sense in the application of the immigration laws. But the laws themselves must be changed. Their wording is so strong that it often takes courage to extract and use the power of discretion that is nevertheless implied within them. If the law said that certain classes of aliens "may" be excluded, it would be easier to avoid such fumbles as the Emmanuel case.

A merely permissive wording, far more intelligent application, and a publicity policy which can scrape the seereey from the State Department's decisions, would help combat the doctrine of guilt by association which has just cost American colleges another valuable man.