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From Labor Action, Vol. 13 No. 51, 19 December 1949, p. 2.
Transcribed & marked up by Einde O’ Callaghan for the Encyclopaedia of Trotskyism On-Line (ETOL).
On December 17 and 18 there will be a student conference in New York called the Conference on Democracy in Education. The origins of this student affair are vague, though there is reason to believe that it was originally inspired by two Stalinist-controlled organizations: the Association of Internes and Medical Students (AIMS) and the Student Division of the National Lawyers Guild. These two organizations (or individuals from them) undertook the organization of several pre-conference planning meetings which saw the broadening of the list of sponsoring organizations.
At the last planning meeting there were approximately 50 representatives of student groups from the New York campus. Of these 50, the majority were non-Stalinists and militant anti-Stalinists. There is no doubt, though, that if the Stalinists had wanted to pack these loosely organized meetings they could have done so with ease. Whether their failure to do so was a matter of tactics or of inefficiency is not clear.
The conference will be divided into four panels. Each participating club is entitled to send one delegate to each panel. The problems and resolutions to be discussed and voted on at the panels are: (1) discrimination against minority groups in the academic world; (2) academic freedom; (3) student economic difficulties; (4) the effect of international tensions on education. The fourth panel on international tensions was pressed for by the Stalinists with the obvious plan of using it as a sounding board for their pro-Russian line. However, judging by the sizable number of anti-Stalinists who will be at the conference this move may well prove inconvenient for the Stalinists.
Following the panels there will be several meetings which will be capped by a forum which is expected to attract several thousand students.
Some of the educators sponsoring the conference are: Reinhold Niebuhr of Union Theological Seminary; Arthur G. McGiffert, president of Chicago Theological Seminary; Randolph C. Smith, director, Little Red Schoolhouse; Professor Goodwin Watson of Columbia University’s Education Department. On the speakers’ list for the final forum are other individuals of similar persuasion plus a Stalinist and fellow traveler or two.
The organizations which have indicated their support thus far are varied, from the Young Progressives of America to a large number of socialist and anti-war clubs affiliated with the New York Student Federation Against War. The latter organization expects to have its point of view represented through approximately 40 delegates. In addition to the above organizations, support has come from several NAACP chapters, Students for Democratic Action at Brooklyn College. World Federalist United Nations Council at Columbia, the Columbia AVC, and a number of others. The list is impressive but not nearly what it should and could be.
The week-end conference will climax the series of planning meetings and students politicking which has been going on with increasing excitement and confusion for the past two weeks. The confusion is to be found primarily among the anti-Stalinist clubs.
A number of these clubs have refused to participate in the conference on the grounds that it is a Stalinist front or, at the very least, is heavily loaded with Stalinists. The claim that it is a Stalinist front at this point is inaccurate, for the percentage of conscious and militant anti-Stalinists who are sponsoring the conference is high. That it is heavily weighted with Stalinists is indisputable. However, the anti-Stalinists who refuse to sponsor the conference because there are active Stalinists in it are in actuality facilitating the Stalinists’ objective of using the conference, and any permanent organization which may develop out of it, for their own purposes.
It is the same story of the disorganized liberal who is terrified of Stalinism and flees from it instead of meeting it head on. If all the anti-Stalinist clubs on the New York campus were to pool their forces within the conference, the Stalinists could be beaten on every issue.
Almost any student organization can become a sponsor. It is a good opportunity for liberals and socialists who agree on certain fundamental questions of democratic rights for students to actually do something about it and at the same time expose the Stalinists who will attempt to take over. Nevertheless, the policy of many student organizations remains to abdicate in face of the Stalinists. This policy has proved to be more than negative – it is destructive. One example of this was the withdrawal of the Columbia Student Council from official sponsorship of the conference, thereby endangering the conference’s access to the facilities of Columbia University for its panels and meetings.
No student movement can exist for any extended period of time if it has Stalinists and anti-Stalinists within it. The Stalinists on campus are no less corrupt than their totalitarian mentors and everything they do in an organization is directed toward using it for their own totalitarian ends. But there is no reason to believe that the Stalinists have the strength to so abuse the conference if the anti-Stalinists unite on a broad but effective level. For then the Stalinists could easily enough be pushed aside by those student organizations which are genuinely concerned with the increasing encroachments on academic freedom.
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Last updated: 10 December 2022