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"The exclusion from our campuses by statute of "known communists" and certain other largely indeterminate categories of speakers constitutes a regulation of the content of education by the General Assembly and an encroachment upon academic freedom. To defend against unwarranted proscription of any one point of view or doctrine is, of course, not to place the University in the position of advocating any doctrine whatsoever. On the contrary, it is only by warding off all such attempts to limit the scope of learning and investigation that a university can justify any claim of unbiased pursuit of truth.

"It is perhaps unnecessary to state to the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees that a university without intellectual freedom is no university. We do not cite to you the ample evidence to show that true university distinction is impossible where the freedom of inquiry is fettered by legislative restrictions. Such restrictions are inimical to the principle which lies at the heart of university life, and they are alien to the traditions of the University of North Carolina. They are certain to lower the standing of the University immediately; and, if long maintained, they will set it apart from the ranks of respected institutions of higher learning in America.

"However well-intentioned the authors may have been in their determination to shield the students from un-American doctrines, there is a fatal contradiction of that purpose in what they have done. In aiming to protect free institutions against subversion, they have fettered an institution which is the surest guarantor of freedom.

"We are fully aware that a state University is a creature of the body politic, that it receives its money from the public treasury, that its existence depends upon political considerations. We are aware also, however, that a peculiar virtue of the American system is that its state universities can be free and, indeed, that they cannot render to the state the benefits for which they were created in the first place unless they are free to conduct fair and open discussion of all ideas without fear of the consequences to any system of ideas.

"We do not here enter into the myriad complications of enforcement that could ensue from a narrow application of the statute. Neither do we consider the degrees of difficulty or embarrassment that are opened up according to the different categories of persons excluded. Taking the long view we believe that the best course is to secure the elimination of