Mark Eisner, chairman of the Board of Higher Education, came to the defense of President Frederick B. Robinson of the College of the City of New York yesterday. Dr. Robinson will not be replaced as head of the institution, the overwhelming majority of whose students are Jews, Eisner prophesied.
The movement for the ousting of Dr. Robinson, which grew out of the expulsion of twenty-one students after an anti-Fascist demonstration in the Great Hall last month, was characterized by Eisner as “futile, ill-advised, puerile and highly improbable of success.”
He said disciplinary action was unlikely against participants in Tuesday’s campus demonstration, the peak of which was the burning of a two-headed effigy, representing Dr. Robinson and Premier Mussolini.
Referring to Dr. Robinson’s use of an umbrella in a campus riot last April, Eisner said:
“I might have handled that situation differently. I might have dropped the umbrella and punched them in the nose if I had been sufficiently provoked.”
He reported receipt of numerous letters concerning the expulsion of the twenty-one students and declined to state whether the faculty’s action was justified until the facts were in hand.
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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.
