BERTRAND RUSSELL

Wairarapa Times-Age, 1 April 1940, Page 4

BERTRAND RUSSELL

AMERICAN APPOINTMENT VOIDED FINDING OF NEW YORK COURT. TALK OF "CHAIR OF INDECENCY." By Telegraph—Press Association—Copyright. NEW YORK. March 30. Declaring that the College Board was attempting to establish a chair of indecency. Mr Justice McGeehan in the Supreme Court voided the appointment of Bertrand Russell (the noted British scientist and writer on social subjects whose book "Marriage and Morals” has been the subject of keen controversy) to the chair of mathematics at the City College of New York. He added: "The appointment is an insult to the people of this city," and upheld a woman taxpayer's charge that Russell's teachings would tend to \ corrupt the students as "his writings . proved him to be salacious, immoral,/ aphrodisiac, libidinous and lecherous." The defence pointed out that he was engaged to teach mathematics, not morals. J On the grounds of academic freedom, ' Harvard announced that the New York decision did not affect its appointment of Bertrand Russell to teach philosophy and semantics. Announcing a reinstatement campaign, liberal, academic and religious groups claimed that Russell was the victim of an intensive campaign in the Hearst press wherein he was stigmatised as "a barnyard moralist, a communist, a nudist, and a dabbler in salacious poetry.”