Monree E. Deutsch, vice president and provost emeritus of the University of California, charged yesterday in a letter to the New York Times that "Communism in not the issue" in the Regents-faculty schism over the "loyalty oath" controversy at that institution.

"It was recalcitrance, disobedience, at which the Regents were striking . . . It is humiliating that great scholars should have such a charge raised against them," he claimed.

A further development in the controversy came last Tuesday when the Academic Senate, representing the faculty on the Northern campuses, voted a resolution condemning the action of the board of Regents in firing 40 professor for refusing to sign non-Communist oaths. Earlier in the week, 87 leading Harvard faculty members wired the Academic Senate their support in the dispute which has already led to the dropping of 45 courses from the California curriculum.

The Academic Senate's resolution strongly attacked the Regents for failing to stand by its agreement whereby faculty members who would not sign the oath had the option of being cleared by the faculty committee on privilege and tenure. The Senate claimed that in firing 40 members of the faculty after they had been cleared by the committee as agreed, the Board of Regents" . . . has above all violated the principle of tenure, an absolutely essential condition in a free university."

The Senate also urged members to contribute individually two percent of their gross wages to sustain non-signing faculty while their cases against the Regents are pending in California courts.