"There was quite a bit of pressure on us not to invite speakers who would embarrass the University," Bellah says, adding that the pressure never came from Conant himself.

"[Conant's] views [on Communism] were quite clear at the time, but I don't think he had the time to care about this sort of thing," Bellah says.

While students usually exhibited tolerance of radical political views, there were exceptions to this case. On Nov. 10, 1948, George W. Stocking '49, then president of the John Reed Club, was attacked by three assailants while distributing pamphlets for a Communist event.

While the stolen pamphlets were later found in a Wigglesworth Hall room, the College meted out no punishment for the attack.

Knowing Left from Left

For every confirmed Marxist in the Class of '49, there were at least three liberals content with being ascribed to the moderate left.

One such activist, Warren A. Guntheroth '49, now a professor at the University of Washington's medical school, remembers the Communists as "kind of fringe people."

"But those of us who were devoted liberals resented them," he adds. The Communists, with their reputation for provoking upheaval and their agitating techniques, often seemed to interfere with the liberals' public relations on campus.

"Every time a good movement would start--for example, an anti-Cold War peace movement--a lot of noisy radicals would show up," Guntheroth says. "Then people would say, 'Oh God, we don't want to be a part of this."

Guntheroth does, however, remember finding himself troubled by the way his fellow students treated their more radical cohorts.

"I was a little disappointed with liberal organizations," Guntheroth says. "They engaged in a public clearing-out of people accused of being Communist."

Bellah also noted that most student debate at the time arose from within the left, in the conflict between liberal and radical students, as many liberals struggled to avoid being branded as Communists.

In October 1946, for example, the Harvard Liberal Union (HLU) purged its executive board of the more radical American Youth for Democracy (AYD) members.

More than 100 of the organization's 125 members had not been present the previous year when the executive board had been elected. A small clique led by Charles G. Sellers '45, Abraham P. Goldblum '46 and Maurice C. Benewitz '47 gathered the night of Oct. 2 to plan an anti-Communist coup.

At an all-group meeting the next day, they portrayed the AYD--heir to the Young Communists League--as an undemocratic organization and won support for the election of a new board. William H. Bozman '46 replaced AYD member Harry A. Mendelsohn '48 as HLU president; three other officers were also deposed.

In a small way, the AYD-HLU subterfuge was a precursor to the anti-Communist purges that occurred across the nation in later years.