331

310

23 Sec. 3. All laws and clauses of laws in conflict
24 with this Act are hereby repealed.
1 Sec. 4. This Act shall become effective upon
2 its ratification. "

STATEMENT OF CHANCELLOR AYCOCK

PART II

"This legislation will seriously harm higher education and the entire state in a variety of ways. It is our duty to express our deep concern clearly and forthrightly. The Facuity Council of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill after careful study and deliberation unanimously adopted a statement on the Visiting Speakers Law. This statement which will be made available to you in full text (is inserted above) will unquestionably be regarded as one of the great documents on the subject of free speech. It is a privilege for me to quote from it:

'Political tampering with the educational process can, over a relatively brief period, drastically lower the quality of the higher education affected. Legislative censorship, once begun, carries an invidious threat of future proscriptions, and inevitably stirs fears in the minds of both faculty and students that expression of unpopular sentiments may produce reprisals against them. Further, to secure and retain faculty members of high quality we must compete in a nationwide market. It is an inescapable fact that any legislative curtailment of free expression on a campus is, a black mark against the institution in the eyes of the overwhelming majority of the best university teachers in America - teachers who are, nevertheless, anti-communist by strong intellectual convictions. We recognize and deeply appreciate the great efforts made by the 1963 General Assembly to provide adequate support for the University and for higher education in general; but, despite the improvement effected, we still have grave difficulties in competing for faculty members. This additional handicap could be disastrous.

'There are many learned societies of national and international character. A number of these have met in Chapel Hill, in the ordinary course of events many more would desire to do so, and some at this moment have Chapel Hill under consideration. The programs of these meetings are not arranged and their speakers are not selected by the host school. No learned society of standing would seriously consider allowing the host institution to interrogate and possibly blackball its duly selected speakers. They will not meet in Chapel Hill if the University lays down any such condition. And many of the finest teachers will not join or long remain a member of a faculty at an institution which these learned societies will not consider as a place to meet. This tends further to lower the prestige of an institution known to be under this kind of legislative restriction.'

"The foregoing statements are not expressions of unfounded fears. A Scientific group was scheduled to meet in Chapel Hill this fall. Each member of the group had been invited to submit a paper to be read at this meeting. A professor in one of the world's most distinguished universities indicated last summer that he was planning to submit a paper dealing with a highly technical subject. This professor was known to have taken the Fifth Amendment a decade ago. Thus we were faced with a serious problem. What should we do? Fortunately, we were able to save the meeting thanks to the cooperation of a group of scientists in a neighboring institution. They agreed to provide a forum in the event this professor submitted a paper. Needless to say this matter involved much time and embarrassment for many people. One further example should be sufficient to illustrate the dimensions of the difficulties which will be encountered in the enforcement of this law. A scientific organization of twenty thousand members