The Militant (logo)  
   Vol. 67/No. 7           March 10, 2003  
 
 
ASU has chance to heal wound
from a war fought 33 years ago
 
{From Arizona Republic, Feb. 11, 2003}

In 1970, philosophy Professor Morris Starsky was fired by Arizona State University for the unacceptable offense of being an honorable man. An anti-war activist. A labor organizer. An abrasive loudmouth. A self-described communist with a small "c."

The technical excuse given by the state Board of Regents was that Starsky had canceled a class without notifying his department head. In fact, Starsky did tell his boss about plans he made to speak at a rally at the University of Arizona. He went there to support students who were asking the UA administration to break its ties with Brigham Young University, which at the time barred Black athletes from participating in its sports programs.

"He knew that the regents were looking for any excuse to get rid of him,"Starsky's widow, Lorraine, told me recently. "But he never did anything illegal and he never compromised his class work. At the same time, he was never bitter about it. He thought it was unjust and he fought to correct it. But he knew that when you stick your neck out in order to do the right thing, you sometimes get your head chopped off. He said, 'If I were living in Chile or Argentina or somewhere else, I might not have just been fired. I might have been tortured or killed.'

"Instead, Starsky was sent into a kind of academic exile. In 1972, a federal judge ruled that the regents had violated Starsky's First Amendment rights by firing him but because Starsky had accepted a sabbatical at the time of his dismissal, an appeals court said that he was not entitled to reinstatement.

In 1975, using requests under the Freedom of Information Act, Starsky learned that the counterintelligence program of the Federal Bureau of Investigation had sent a phony derogatory letter about him to the committee that was reviewing his teaching contract. For the most part, committee members said they discounted the letter. In the end, two faculty groups as well as the university president recommended that Starsky not be fired. The regents dismissed him anyway. Starsky later found out that he had been under FBI surveillance since 1965.

"People find this kind of thing hard to believe in this day and age," Lorraine said. "But with the move toward war with Iraq, I believe we are revisiting some of these same issues. Starsky was a very in-your-face guy. The truth is, a person who goes out of his way to speak his mind can find his career at risk."

Starsky never worked full time at a university after leaving Arizona. He met and married Lorraine in the mid-1970s and taught part time at Cleveland State University, supplementing his income as everything from a shoe salesman to a clerk. He died of a rare heart ailment in 1989. He was 55.

"He never stopped," Lorraine said from her home in Pittsburgh. "At the hospital, he was handing copies of the Militant (a socialist newspaper) to the orderlies."

Not long ago, Lorraine sent a letter to ASU President Michael Crow, offering to donate all of the files Starsky kept on his time there. At ASU, she said, the papers "can be properly archived and stored for scholars of that turbulent era."

She also pointed out that Starsky's son, Jacob, has been accepted for the fall term at ASU. "He was fascinated by the stories, I guess," Lorraine said. In her letter to Crow, she asks if the university would consider waiving tuition and room and board for her son in exchange for Starsky's papers.

ASU hasn't decided how to respond. There's no way to make up 100 percent of what Starsky lost. But I'm told that the children of professors, staff and retirees pay only one-quarter of the regular tuition. The university could restore Starsky's good name and standing, then offer the same break to his son. After 33 years, 75 percent redemption is better than none.  
 
 
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