Universities: A Rose Red with Anger

In his decade as president of the University of Alabama, Frank Rose has given his state good reason for pride. He has upgraded the faculty, brought in tens of millions of dollars in research money, sharply expanded the graduate departments—and helped build national-championship football teams to boot. Until recently, he has even managed, with a blend of geniality and tact, to get along with a state legislature normally suspicious of higher education. No longer. Last week he seemed on the verge of resignation after an angry struggle with legislators over the university's right to air unpopular opinions.

The feud began three weeks ago when Rose refused to lend his name to a protest sponsored by Governor Lurleen Wallace condemning a federal court order that Alabama desegregate all its public schools. But what really fired up the legislators was a student publication called Emphasis '67—Revolutions that included articles by Negro Militant Stokely Carmichael on 'Power and Racism," and by Communist Bettina Aptheker on the U.S. in Viet Nam. The pamphlet provided background for a student-sponsored symposium last month on world problems at which Dean Rusk was a main speaker.

Like Berkeley? Alabama legislators called for an investigation of the student fund that produced Emphasis. The articles, cried Representative Ralph Slate, indicated that some Alabama students "want to run the university like they do in Berkeley." Senator Alton Turner contended that Rose had "outlived his usefulness." Representative Gus Young, a Baptist minister, complained that Rose had used the word "damn" in a speech and asserted that legislators "have just as much right to defend Christianity and democracy as anybody else has to defend Communism." A bill was introduced in the legislature to ban any speaker at the university who is a Communist, advocates overthrow of the government of the U.S. or the state of Alabama, or pleads the Fifth Amendment on subversive activities.

Rose pointed out that the views of Bettina Aptheker had been rebutted in Emphasis by an article by Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman General Earle Wheeler, and that Carmichael's black-power views were balanced by those of N.A.A.C.P. Executive Director Roy Wilkins. Students marched to Rose's house to show their support.

At a university fund-raising meeting, Rose tossed aside his prepared text and vowed to stand behind his students "as long as they are not vulgar, obscene or seditious." Declared he: "We in Alabama have an inferiority complex. We think everybody in the damn world is against us. We are cursing the land. This must stop. We have got to get along." As for himself, he warned "those who want to get to me" that "I'm not for sale, and the University of Alabama, so long as I'm president, is not for sale." Added Rose: "I want to be able to sleep at night with a clear conscience." But if that becomes impossible, "then I guess I'll have to find another job."