Willmore Kendall, assistant professor of political science at Yale, last night challenged the appointment of J. Robert Oppenheimer '26 as William James Lecturer on the grounds that he might be a communist agent.

Speaking in a debate sponsored by the Harvard Athenaeum, Kendall quoted a former executive director of the Atomic Energy Commission who charged that Oppenheimer was a Soviet spy. "If he was ever an agent," said Kendall, "the presumption is that he still is an agent of the Soviet Union, and Harvard University is an accomplice in treason."

The real stake in the Oppenheimer case, Kendall continued, is "the internal security program of the U.S." The opponents of this program, "liberal intellectuals," tranform Oppenheimer into an example of "outraged scholarly innocence" in order to "discredit the security program." This he said, was the purpose of the men who appointed Oppenheimer.

Chase Kimball, a member of the American Civil Liberties Union, agreed that a Communist would not be fit for Harvard's lectureship post. Speaking for the affirmative, he defined a Communist as "no scholar," for he cannot have an open mind, but must follow the party line."

However, by the tradition of American criminal law, Kimball pointed out, "a man is innocent until proven guilty." Further more, he added, "the evidence that Oppenheimer is a Communist is practically nil."

Anticipating a negative argument that Oppenheimer's perjury "in order to protect a friend" disqualified him for the appointment, Kimball said that if the telling of one or two lies was set as a standard, "very few of the present faculty would be qualified to teach at Harvard."

Medford Evans, a former member of the AEC, alleged that "more than one or two lies are involved." He termed Oppenheimer "intellectually dishonest," and said that he had not lied to protect his friends, but had "sold them out."

Evans felt that Oppenheimer was "once the most powerful man in the world," and warned that his "current rehabilitation" by such institutions as Columbia, Harvard, and CBS might "make him again the most powerful man in America."

By opposing this appointment, Evans said that the Veritas Committee, the Harvard Athnaeum, the Harvard Times-Republican and the Harvard Conservative League "had helped the country."