Two bills to establish a state-supported university have been introduced into the New York State Senate and Assembly as the result of yesterday’s presentation of a report to the Mayor’s Committee on Unity in New York City charging discrimination against Jewish, Negro, and Catholic students in colleges and universities in New York City as well as elsewhere throughout the country.
The bills would provide for a $50,000,000 university offering adequate and equal opportunity for cultural, scientific, and professional training for a student body which might reach as high as 40,000 to 50,000. Funds would be obtained from the State’s $485,000,000 post-war reconstruction fund. Early action on the measures is expected here.
Two other bills, introduced into the Legislature previously, ask that jurisdiction be conferred on the State Commission Against Discrimination so that the Commission would be empowered to eliminate discrimination in educational institutions as well as in employment.
(A demand for the withdrawal of public subsidies, in the form of tax exemptions, from New York colleges and universities which practice discrimination, has been made by Rabbi Stephen S. Wise, president of the American Jewish Congress. Pointing out that the city’s tax laws provide for tax exemption to institutions provided they do not deny the use of their facilities “to any person otherwise qualified, by reason of is color, race or religion,” Dr. Wise called for the enforcement of the law.)
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