SIDNEY HOOK
703
a reputable witness of the evidence that it was not I who was deceiv–
ing the public, I left .
The
Herald Tribune
ran an exclusive front-page story of the inci–
dent the next day. The
New York Times
ran a boxed item reporting a
hearsay account of the incident, probably relayed by Shapley or one
of his assistants, in which the whole point of my visit was suppressed
and in which I was portrayed as a wild man bursting in on an inno–
cent Shapley . To cover himself the reporter added that an attempt to
confirm the details by a phone call to my home was unsuccessful. No
one answered the phone! It so happened, however, that I went im–
mediately home after the encounter with Shapley to prepare my talk
at the counterdemonstration meeting we were holding at Freedom
House the afternoon of the next day. The simple truth was that the
reporter , who presumably was the same one who was writing slanted
stories against our Ad Hoc Committee, now rechristened Americans
for Intellectual Freedom, never telephoned.
I never learned the details of Shapley's collaboration with the
Communist Party and how he had become involved. He had been a
very active participant in the World Congress of Intellectuals at
Wroclaw the previous year. He was known as an ardent supporter of
Henry Wallace's campaign. To his credit he had helped line up
American scientists before the Nazi-Soviet Pact in denouncing Nazi
persecution of Jewish and non-conforming scientists, even though
this involved collaboration with the Boas Committee which studiously
avoided any mention of the ideological purges of scientists in the
Soviet Union. But he was now playing the role not only of master of
ceremonies at the Waldorf intellectual circus but of extenuator, if not
outright apologist, of Soviet scientific repression. The Waldorf Con–
ference followed hard on the brutal purge of Soviet geneticists after
Stalin had decided that Lysenko's views were in accordance with the
principles of dialectical materialism. When questioned about the fate
of Vavilov, the eminent Soviet geneticist who perished in a concen–
tration camp, and other Soviet biologists, Shapley claimed that they
had merely suffered "demotions." In a letter to one of the sponsors
(Dr. Lengyel) who had requested that I be permitted to speak at the
conference , he again referred to the "demotions" of these victims and
compared them to the uncertain fate ofJewish applicants to medical
schools in America. "The admission of Jews to medical schools and
the demotions of Russian geneticists are not too distantly related." In
answer to our criticisms, he did declare a few days before the con–
ference met: "Science has to be free- in our Southern states as well
