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is a step toward substitution of politically controlled indoctrination for reasonably objective education. Regulation of speakers on the campus is best left, along with other matters of educational policy, to the trustees, the administration and the faculty.

"To the extent that the legislative purpose may have been to prevent advocacy of the overthrow of our government by force, violence or other unlawful means, the statute adds nothing to existing law. Ever since 1941 such advocacy in a State owned building has been a crime in North Carolina. The 1963 statute goes much further. It undertakes to prohibit any person to whom it applies from speaking on any State supported campus on any subject. Under this statute it would not even be possible to invite the Russian Ambassador to come to speak about the nuclear test ban treaty, cultural exchanges, or the present differences between Russia and China.

"A doctor, scientist or other expert from a foreign country is banned if he is known to be a member of the Communist Party or to advocate the overthrow of our Constitution - otherwise, he may speak, even if he is from behind the Iron Curtain. Yet the diseases of humanity, the behavior of light rays and the properties of hybrid corn pose the same questions to the communist and the non-communist. A university is a place where anyone who may have useful knowledge should be welcomed as a visitor to share that knowledge. By this statute, this University is shut off from some of those who possess it perhaps even prohibited from using the services of scholars from foreign countries who can go to other universities under exchange programs approved or encouraged by our government.

"An American - scholar, scientist, doctor, lawyer, author, poet, artist, or laborer - is banned if he has invoked the Fifth Amendment in refusing to answer 'any question with respect to communist or subversive connections, or activities, before any duly constituted legislative committee, any judicial tribunal, or any executive or administrative board of the United States or any state.' He is banned though there is no proof - and no other basis for assuming - that he is a communist or that he has ever advocated the overthrow of our Constitution. He is banned for the sole reason that he has exercised a right guaranteed to every citizen by the Constitution of the United States - a right which does honor to the Anglo-American concept of justice and which, as much as any other single factor, justifies our claim that our system of justice is superior to that of the communist countries.

"We do not believe that speakers visiting our campuses have created any serious danger to the State or its youth. The wise and great men who wrote into our Constitution a guarantee of free speech were fully aware that the privilege can be abused. Fortunately, they were also aware that the danger to a free society from abuse of free speech is not nearly so great as the danger from attempting to curtail or supress free speech. We devoutly believe, with them, that error is far more likely to be enshrined by legislative fiat than by untrammeled debate in a public forum.

"The new statute reflects a fear regarding the strength of our democratic institutions which we do not share. Freedom of discussion on the campus has made few if any converts to communism. Over all the years, we doubt that even one of the very small number of student communists was induced to become a Party member by speeches on the campus. More probably, student communism has resulted from a tragically irrational reaction to inequities and injustices in our society. The rare student communist either was already such before he arrived , or would probably have become a communist had he never come to the campus. Indeed, free discussion on the campus, the general tenor of which is always overwhelmingly anti-communist, actually points out to students more constructive methods of giving meaning to their genuine idealism, which the State and Nation badly need to encourage and preserve. We fear that the new statute is a step toward destruction of freedom in the name of its preservation. We believe that a university campus is a place where any idea should be open to free discussion - whether it be the promise of a communist utopia, a Birchite charge of treason in high places, or the thesis of a governor that salvation lies only in defiance of the federal courts. Youthful faith in American institutions can be engendered and preserved far more effectively by meeting our challengers openly than by attempting to put legislative stoppers in youthful ears.