American Jewish Committee Opposes State Aid to Sectarian Colleges

The American Jewish Committee’s first state-wide Civil Rights Conference today urged sharp opposition to Governor Rockefeller’s recent proposal of aid to private sectarian colleges.

The proposal now under consideration by the New York State Legislature would require the state to give $18, 200, 000 a year to private colleges and universities for expansion purposes. Under the program, grants of $200 a year would be given to every student attending a college in the state whose tuition exceeds $500 a year. The funds would be paid to colleges with religious sponsorship as well as to non-sectarian institutions.

In a resolution, the Committee’s Civil Rights Conference urged the Governor to appoint a commission which would study the “serious questions” raised by his proposal. Earlier last week, the Committee’s New York City chapter had stressed that the “basic interests of all citizens, as well as the institutions of higher learning, will best be served if the constitutional guarantees of separation of church and state are strictly observed.”

Support for the Governor’s program was expressed at an all-day conference of the Rabbinical Council of America here. The Orthodox rabbis were told by their president, Rabbi Charles Weinberg, that the student aid proposal was “vitally needed for the growth, expansion and enlargement of higher educational facilities in New York State.”

Asserting that the proposal “does not interfere in the slightest,” with the principle of church-state separation, Rabbi Weinberg said the Governor’s plan would allow “our heavily burdened students to help defray the ever-mounting cost of university study. Tuition charges are so prohibitively high today that poorer students in ever-increasing numbers are compelled to abandon any quest for professional and technical training essential for community progress and welfare.”