 Selsam and other school administrators denied that the school was a Communist front and fought against having it so officially labeled.Given the political radicalism of the faculty members and the Marxist-oriented instruction at the school, and facing external political pressure against the school, declining student enrollment, and publication in the West of Nikita Khrushchev's secret speech—a speech which described in detail Stalin's crimes and political purges —all of these factors ultimately forced the school administrators to close down the school in 1956.On April 8, 1953, represented by attorney Joseph Forer, Selsam accused the committee as much as it accused him.