Struik's status has been altered in name only. He is still not free to teach, although technically he is no longer suspended. The new M.I.T. committee, in its own words, "reserves all rights to take such future action as may seem appropriate for the Institute."

Charles Hughes

The New York Board of Higher Education received a setback last November when the State Court of Appeals ruled that teachers accused of Community Party membership were entitled to a court trial.

Charles W. Hughes, associate professor of Music and choir director at the city's Hunter College, had been dismissed from his post in October, 1954 on charges of Communist Party membership and failure to cooperate with an investigating board by refusing to inform.

The Board had ruled that a department trial had not given evidence that Hughes had broken "in good faith" from the Communist Party, which he admitted joining in 1938 and leaving in 1941.

Hughes won the court trial granted him. In January Judge Henry Epstein ruled that he had made a clean break from the Party. Hughes, however, has not yet won reinstatement in his position. He is awaiting an appeal on the charge of failure to cooperate with the investigating board by not informing.

Several teachers who have been dismissed on such grounds have appealed to New York's State Commissioner of Education, who has authority to reverse the decisions. His rulings on the teacher's necessity to inform is still to come.

Corliss Lamont

In a decision that somewhat foreshadowed the Kamin ruling, Columbia philosophy lecturer Corliss Lamont '24 last July won a dismissal of an indictment charging him with contempt of Congress.

Federal Judge Edward Weinfeld found the indictment defective because it failed to show the authority of Senator Joseph R. McCarthy's (R.-Wisc.) investigating subcommittee of the Senate Government Operations Committee to "conduct an inquiry."

Lamont had been on voluntary leave from Collumbia to prepare his defense, but next year will again teach his Philosophy course in "The Philosophy of Naturalistic Humanism."

In September, 1953, he had refused to answer 23 questions asked by McCarthy, citing the free speech clause of the First Amendment, and stating that as a private citizen his affairs were not properly the subject of an inquiry. McCarthy had based his investigation on the fact that some of Lamont's books on Russia had been used as bibliographical material for Army pamphlets on Russia during the war.

Judge Weinfeld did not go as far as Judge Bailey Aldrich, who stated definitely that McCarthy's committee was not empowered under law to conduct such an investigation. Judge Weinfeld attacked the indictments for failing to show the authority and implied that it did not exist, but he did not actually say that there was none.

The case failed to determine Lamont's right to refuse to answer on the basis of his status as a private citizen, because it was thrown out on the more technical issue.

Herbert Fuchs