Nine City College students–including five girls–were arrested today following the start of a strike called to demand the suspension of two faculty members charged with anti-Jewish and anti-Negro discrimination. Police said the nine students arrested refused to clear the main entrance to the college to permit non-striking students to enter.
Placards carried by several hundred pickets early this morning read: “Oust the Bigots, Join the Strike,” “Knickerbocker”a Anti-Semitism Is CCNY’s Shame,” and “Davis Knickerbocker Must Go.” The two teachers against whom the protest strike was called are Prof, William Knickerbocker, chairman of the Romance Languages Department, and William Davis, an economics instructor.
Knickerbocker was cleared last year by the Board of Higher Education of charges that he discriminated against Jewish students and Jewish faculty members. Davis was found guilty last fall of segregating Negroes in a dormitory for G.I. students and was removed from his post as dormitory supervisor, but was retained on the faculty.
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