Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2012] THE EXPULSION OF ROBERT BURKE 109
of the students for disorderly conduct and causing a riot. Columbia associate
dean N. M. McKnight made an early-morning visit to the jail and had
the arrested students released in his custody. The theater did not press
charges against the students. 60
The Spectator similarly pointed to the inconsistency between the
Columbia administration’s handling of the Nemo riot and its expulsion of
Burke. It noted the administration’s claim that Burke, as a leader of the anti-
Nazi demonstration at President Butler’s mansion, was responsible for the
alleged unmannerly behavior of students who could not be identified. The
administration therefore deemed Burke “unfit to continue as a student.” Yet
when the police caught the leaders of the Nemo theater riot “red-handed,”
the administration did not expel or suspend them—nor did the administration
take any action against “the rowdies” or their leaders, who, “[s]houting
obscene remarks,” tore down the Barnard fence “right in front of Dean Gildersleeve’s
home” on the night of May 12. The Spectator concluded that
the administration expelled Burke because he had damaged its public reputation
by challenging its complicity in a major Nazi propaganda festival. 61
Students at other New York City colleges staged demonstrations of
solidarity with Burke, against Nazism, and for academic freedom. At
CCNY, 500 students heard speakers excoriate John R. Turner, dean of men,
for banning a planned campus protest meeting at which Burke and the president
of CCNY’s Student Council were to speak. Dean Turner explained his
refusal by stating that such a meeting was not “in good taste.” 62
The ASU chapter at Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, N.Y., sent
a delegation to Columbia to see President Butler or Dean Hawkes to urge
Burke’s reinstatement. A member of the president’s staff informed them
that “Dr. Butler is not speaking on the Burke case.” The delegation then
proceeded to Dean Hawkes’ office, only to be told that he was away. 63
The day after the strike, 200 Hunter College students flooded President
Butler’s office with telephone calls during his lunch hour, protesting his
refusal to reinstate Burke. The young women lined up at a telephone booth,
60. Barnard Bulletin, October 23, 1936; The New York Times, January 8, 1934;
Columbia Spectator, January 8 and 11, 1934, and September 28, 1936. The New
York Post published a letter from a Columbia graduate pointing out that Dean
Hawkes had no difficulty “condoning . . . theatre-wrecking [and] pre-examination
riots.” New York Post, October 2, 1936, roll 128, ACLU Papers.
61. Columbia Spectator, September 28, 1936.
62. The Campus, October 23, 1936; Barnard Bulletin, October 23, 1936; Daily
Worker, October 22 and 23, 1936; Columbia Spectator, October 21, 1936; The New
York Times, October 21, 1936.
63. Columbia Spectator, October 21, 1936.