John Doar, president of the New York City Board of Education, cited the First Amendment, which guarantees the right of free speech, in reply to charges by the Anti-Defamation League of B’nai B’rith that he and other board members sat by passively while black extremists indulged in anti-Semitic outbursts during the recent hearings on school decentralization.
The charge was made by Arnold Forster, general counsel of the ADL, in a supplementary statement to a report released yesterday by Dore Schary, ADL national chairman. The report, a preliminary survey of findings of a more complete study of the Negro-Jewish conflict in New York City to be published next spring, claimed that “raw, undisguised” anti-Semitism in the city’s school system had reached crisis proportions. It blamed city and state officials who, the ADL contended, failed “to condemn it swiftly and strongly enough and to remove from positions of authority those who have utilized anti-Semitism.”
Mr. Doar, who formerly served as head of the Civil Rights Division of the Justice Department, said the board did not cut off or censor speakers who made anti-Semitic or anti-Negro statements at the decentralization hearings because of the First Amendment “In dealing with such statements, I think the way to deal with it is to deal with it fairly and not give in to it, but I would not take any action that would infringe on the civil liberties of any individual,” Mr. Doar said. “After all, we have the First Amendment in this country. We start with that premise.”
In a related development, the New York City Board of Education turned down a request by Mayor John V. Lindsay that charges be brought against two Negro school teachers accused of having made anti-Semitic remarks. The 12-member board rejected a resolution calling on Superintendent of Schools Bernard E. Donovan and all district superintendents to take “appropriate actions” against teachers and supervisors “who advocate or stimulate racial or religious hatred.”
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
