Out of Vanderbilt University's new $1,300,000 divinity school last week marched Dean J. Robert Nelson on a grim mission of conscience. He strode across the Nashville campus and handed Chancellor Harvie Branscomb a terse letter of resignation. By week's end ten other divinity-school faculty members followed Nelson, 17 students quit, and three recent graduates returned their diplomas. It was the worst ruckus in Vanderbilt's 87-year history.
At issue was the expulsion last March of a Negro divinity-school student, chunky, spectacled James M. Lawson Jr. A Methodist minister, the Rev. Mr. Lawson, 32, was...
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