Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

110 JOURNAL FOR THE STUDY OF ANTISEMITISM [ VOL. 4:89
and one after the other placed a call asking to speak to Butler. 64 Butler’s
secretary told each of the callers that the president was “out.” 65
Socialist Party presidential candidate Norman Thomas, a prominent
civil libertarian, campaigning at Columbia shortly before the election in
November, forcefully condemned Burke’s expulsion. Thomas declared: “At
Columbia, manners have become the highest good. This along with proper
respect for the home of the President.” He emphasized: “This intolerable
situation has been accepted by the student body only under subtle
coercion.” 66
Because courts during the 1930s placed almost no limits on university
administrators’ power to discipline students, Burke dropped his lawsuit in
October 1937. The large-scale campus protests, although receiving considerable
coverage in the New York press, and even outside New York, could
not influence the court. 67 Burke and Hays, however, were primarily concerned
with bringing his expulsion to wide public attention. They wanted to
expose university administrations’ efforts to forge friendly ties with Germany’s
Nazified universities and their indifference to Nazi persecution of
Jews. During most of the year prior to dropping his lawsuit, Burke was
heavily engaged in the CIO’s steelworkers’ organizing campaign in
Youngstown. This gave him very little time to devote to court hearings on
the lawsuit in New York.
By November 1936, Burke was back in Youngstown organizing steelworkers.
He was the target in the first outbreak of violence in the Youngstown
campaign when three company thugs assaulted him as he distributed
union fliers at the gate of a Republic steel mill in nearby Warren, Ohio.
Attacked from behind, Burke was unable to defend himself. One assailant
struck him with a blackjack, inflicting a deep laceration on the back of his
head that required medical attention. The Columbia Spectator gave the
assault front-page coverage. 68
64. Ibid., October 23, 1936.
65. Daily Worker, October 23, 1936.
66. Barnard Bulletin, November 6, 1936.
67. Columbia Spectator, October 5, 1937. The campaign for Burke received
press coverage across the country. The Nashville [Tennessee] Banner, for example,
called the picketing of President Butler’s offices a “spectacle which has not been
witnessed in a Southern institution.” The Hollywood [California] Anti-Nazi News
strongly praised Burke for refusing to apologize for the anti-Nazi demonstration at
Butler’s mansion and insisted that he be reinstated. Nashville Banner, October 24,
1936, and Hollywood Anti-Nazi News, November 5, 1936, roll 128, ACLU Papers.
68. Youngstown Daily Vindicator, November 14, 1936; Columbia Spectator,
November 16, 1936. Forty to fifty people witnessed the attack, which occurred at