SIDNEY HOOK
My dear Dr. Shapley:
I am enclosing a letter I received sometime ago from Dr. Sidney Hook. I
am sorry for the delay in bringing the matter to your attention, but as
you may imagine, I was swamped by arrangements for the dinner to
Bishop Ornam.
As you know, my only function as a member of the program committee
of the Cultural and Scientific Conference for World Peace is in helping
with the religious panel. I know nothing as to how speakers on the other
panels, or at the plenary sessions, are chosen. I suggest, however, that
it would be well if Dr. Hook were given an opportunity to present his
paper. .. .
Very cordially yours,
Guy Emery Shipler
Editor
711
Dr. Shipler confirmed his request to you in his statement to the press on
March 20th,
cf.
N.Y.
Herald Tribune
of that date, page 19, column 4.
What am I to think, Dr. Shapley: As an astronomer you know that the
probability of three independently written letters, mailed at different times
about the same subject to the same person, being lost in the mails is inde–
terminately if not infinitely small. At the same time I am loath to conclude
that you are deliberately telling an untruth although you have not scrupled
to slander my integrity in charging me with plain and persistent misstate–
ment of fact.
There is only one alternative explanation which plausibly accounts for
your conduct, unexampled in scientific and academic circles . It is that you
do not know what is going on within your own organization, that the inner
Communist group are deceiving you to the point of suppressing letters sent
to you which they do not wish to come to your attention, and that you have
become the willing dupe of enemies of your own country as well as of the
ideals of moral decency and scientific truth you profess.
Since you probably sent copies of your letter to the sponsors of the Con–
ference who forwarded my communication to you, I demand either a pub–
lic apology or the names and addresses of all the persons to whom you have
sent your untruthful charges against me .
Needless to say I regard your conduct in this matter as unbecoming a
teacher, scholar and scientist.
Yours very truly,
Sidney Hook
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Sidney Hook is Professor of Philosophy Emeritus at New York University
and Senior Research Fellow at the Hoover Institution on War, Revolution, and
Peace.
