The president of B’nai B’rith has denounced proposed legislation before Congress to curb student protests as a measure more likely to aggravate turmoil than ease it. Dr. William A. Wexler addressed 2,000 delegates at the 117th annual session of B’nai B’rith’s district three, one of the oldest and largest B’nai B’rith districts, covering New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Delaware and West Virginia.
He chided “ambitious politicians” who rush “to offer bills like lollipops to appease the frustrations of an adult society that appears unwilling to make the hard effort to understand its youth and wants only to quiet them, by crude force if necessary.” Dr. Wexler said, “The rash of punitive proposals” in Congress and state legislatures “would accomplish little except threaten academic freedom, encourage conformity and punish more of the innocent students than the guilty.” He stressed that no more than two-percent of the student enrollment are radical extremists. “We need to be more conscious that the vast majority of our youth are telling us some hard truths and to ignore them is an even more dangerous game,” he said.
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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.
