Chapter XLV: The Academic Wink

They have had a series of presidents at the University of the Ore Trust. The old president was Northrop, an amiable gentleman, much liked by the faculty because he did not understand the modern card-filing system. Then came Vincent, one of the “go-getters.” A professor whom he “got” writes me: “He apparently felt that he held a mandate to break the hearts of the men who had served under Northrop.” As a result of faculty clamor, an “advisory committee” was established, but the method of appointing this was ingeniously contrived so that Vincent had the power to keep off any liberals. This committee met in secret, and my correspondent describes to me its operation:

A poor devil, Professor A, who had been teaching for a small salary in
hopes of promotion, would receive some fine morning a notice from
headquarters that his contract was terminated at the end of the year.
Professor B would be advised that he had one year more to serve,
during which time he had better be looking for a new place. Professor
C would be notified that his salary would not be increased. Smothered
with rage, disappointment and despair, he would rush to the president
of the university to know in what particular he had erred or sinned.
The president in his unctuous way would inform the professor that he
was sorry for what had been done but could do nothing, because the
matter lay in the hands of the advisory committee, with which he could
not interfere. Our victim would then set out to find the advisory
committee, but as it was made up of nine members and had adjourned, he
could not locate it. He would continue his search, and perchance find
one of the members of the illustrious committee. Upon his making
inquiry as to why and to what purpose he would be assured of the
member’s sympathy, but would be told that there was an understanding
among the members of the advisory committee that nothing should be
said as to what was done in the sessions or how the members voted. The
disappointed pedagogue could get nothing from anybody; there was no
one responsible; he had been sandbagged in a dark alley, but who did
the job he could not learn.

Vincent was called to become head of the Rockefeller Foundation. Then came Marion LeRoy Burton, a former clergyman, and president of Smith College for young ladies, a “booster” from way back, an inspirationalist of the Chautauqua school; the university gave him a grand reception, with bands and torches. He said in the hearing of an acquaintance of mine that he was going to make Minnesota a gentleman’s school of the Yale type. What actually exists is a great academic department-store. Sinclair Lewis described it to me—“They sell you two yards of Latin and half a yard of Greek, and a bored young instructor hands it out over the counter.” Lewis heard President Burton addressing a meeting of the plutocracy to raise funds, and telling the touching story of his life—he was a little boy who carried newspapers on cold mornings, and now he had fifteen thousand dollars a year, and a big house, and a retiring pension—a wonderful country is America!

Another friend of mine heard President Burton make a speech in Denver, before a gathering of business men called the “Mile High Club.” He said that at his university the students were allowed to think, but they were “guided in their thinking”; and the business men got the point and chuckled. His speech was a series of cheap jokes and hackneyed utterances, delivered with fervid eloquence. His type of scholarship you may judge from the titles of some of the books which he has produced: “The Secret of Achievement”; “The Life Which Is Life Indeed”; “On Being Divine.”

Last year President Burton got tired of his regents, and accepted a higher salary at the University of Michigan, where we shall meet him again. His place has been taken by one of the university’s own professors, who was supposed to act as a rubber-stamp to the interlocking regents, but is now behind the scenes engaged in the usual struggle with Grand Bully Butler. President Coffman is not even allowed to make appointments to the university—to say nothing of allowing the heads of departments to do so. The names are brought up before the board of regents, and these wary gentlemen go over the man’s list of degrees and his record, and then Grand Duke Snyder says: “That seems good, but is he all right generally?” meaning, of course, has he any “dangerous ideas.”

In the fall of 1919 the inspirational President Burton delivered some of those wonderful high-sounding phrases, which are a part of our university swindle. He said that “integrity” must be the chief characteristic of university men and women. Whereupon a college paper, “The Foolscap,” was moved to a little plain speaking. It said:

Academic freedom, to be sure, exists here at Minnesota as at other
equally “ideal” universities. Our president has publicly announced
that fact. Our faculty and the student body enthusiastically applauded
that announcement. This academic freedom, however, is of so peculiar a
nature that no one member of the faculty is free publicly to discuss
it. The president may speak of it with an engaging boldness; the
students may speak of it (and do) with a fine ironic scorn; but
members of the faculty, those to whom is intrusted our instruction in
“all forms of knowledge,” those even whom we address as “Professor”
and “Dean,” they dare not utter their true opinion concerning it;
their mouths are effectually sealed. This the students know. They have
seen the flush of shame and anger rise to the cheeks of embarrassed
teachers who could reply to audacious undergraduate taunts of
insincerity and dishonesty only with mortified silence. They have
seen, at that moment when vigorous applause gave generous approval to
our president’s insistence on academic freedom, at that very moment
when enthusiasm for truth was at its highest, at that very moment they
saw instructors wink at their colleagues, and deans look meaningly at
some understanding friend. Students, both inside and outside the class
room, are particularly observant of the actions of their instructors.
They know when deans applaud because they have to; when professors say
things they do not mean. They know that even while they listen to talk
of academic freedom they see men annually relieved of their academic
burdens for having dared to utter what they deemed to be the truth.
These students know the colleges from which such instructors were
dismissed. They know the names of these instructors. They know the
cause for which they were dismissed. They know, also, that such is the
state of academic freedom at our university that, even as we go to
press, at least one professor in the academic college—a professor,
too, whose discreet devotion to facts, and whose cautious refusal to
permit the slightest classroom interpretation thereof, make his
potentially excellent subject an inexpressible bore—that at least this
one professor is trembling with fear and anger because of official
intimation that he had entertained opinions for which his institution
did not stand.

This publication made a tremendous uproar in the university. For, of course, all university influence depends upon the keeping up of a pretense of freedom; the public must believe in these mighty captains of erudition and must not see them wink as they use their high-sounding words. A faculty committee of five members was appointed to investigate the statements made. This committee interviewed a great number of university people, members of the faculty of all ranks, both men and women, also students and alumni. They submitted a report, of which I quote parts. You note the carefully guarded phrases:

A great deal of evidence has been presented to your committee which
indicates the existence in our academic community of a sense of
restraint and repression of a kind and degree distinctly unfavorable
to a sound and intellectual life. This is already indicated by the
vote taken at the meeting of the faculty on February 16. The
investigation of the committee has served to confirm and verify this
impression of a condition that cannot be described as wholesome. Fears
have been disclosed to the committee, which if recounted in detail
might seem to many members of the faculty absurd and unbelievable, and
which perhaps could not be entertained by others, either because of
the possession of greater courage, or of a greater security of tenure,
or because of the fact that their own convictions are in happier
conformity with the ruling opinion. Nevertheless, the undoubted
presence of these fears in the minds of many members of the faculty
constitutes a psychological atmosphere depressing in its influence,
and calculated to have a deleterious effect upon the sincerity and
quality of the teaching done under a sense of it....

It has become of late a frequent experience that complaint on the part
of some person or organization outside the university leads to an
investigation, formal or informal, of the views or activities of some
member of the faculty. Commonly, it may be taken for granted that the
activities complained of are wholly within the discretion of a teacher
and the rights of a citizen. The mere knowledge, however, that such
complaints are under investigation, creates a sense of intimidation,
felt most strongly, of course, by the more inexperienced members of
the faculty whose academic tenure is less secure....

Much of the fear prevalent on the campus is due to reports of the
manner in which investigations have been conducted by the regents, the
attitude exhibited not always having been sufficiently clear and
consistent to be wholly reassuring. Doubtless such impressions are
sometimes due to mere inadvertencies; but the fact is that a member of
the faculty, when summoned to answer charges preferred, frequently
finds himself unjustifiably on the defensive....

Evidence has been brought to the attention of your committee which
plainly indicates the use of espionage by external forces that
continually attempt to exert pressure upon the authorities as to
university teaching and personnel. Your committee is firmly of the
opinion that such pressure is not in the public interest. The invasion
by private detectives of the domain of academic life and thought is
scarcely compatible with the maintenance of a sound and wholesome
intellectual spirit. The methods and point of view of these people may
be illustrated by your committee’s own experience. Early in the course
of this investigation, one of these agents sought and obtained an
interview with a member of your committee, in which he volunteered the
information that the “Foolscap” editorial (which, as it subsequently
developed, he had not even read) was a piece of political propaganda,
that he knew the particular party headquarters whence it came, and
that it was certain he could discover the real author concealed behind
the editorial screen. He offered, accordingly, on the assumption that
your committee was interested, not in the question of fact raised by
the editorial, but rather in the exposure and punishment of a
quasi-criminal conspiracy supposedly involved in its publication, to
worm himself into the confidence of the editor of the “Foolscap” and
to procure for your committee by betrayal of this confidence the name
of the guilty propagandist author. It is deplorable to note the
constantly extending nets of private spy systems in civil life, and it
is to be hoped that the threatened invasion of academic life by this
sinister influence may be prevented. No thoughtful person can fail to
see how blighting would be its influence, when once firmly
established, in the destruction of mutual confidence, and in rendering
impossible that frankness of discussion and opinion without which the
intellectual life is not freely nourished and stimulated.

There remains only to state what action the faculty took in this matter. One member of the committee tells me about it:

They postponed action until such a time as the committee was ready to
report again to a closed faculty meeting giving specific instances of
lack of academic freedom, with names and dates. The committee, having
decided to present three typical cases in detail to the faculty, asked
the president to summon a meeting. He passed the buck to the committee
of the deans known as the senate. The deans thought it inopportune to
call the meeting at that particular time, it being just prior to the
June examinations. Summer vacation ensued. In September, when college
re-opened, one of the five committeemen had gone East for a year as an
exchange professor; another had been retired as a Carnegie pensioner
on account of his age; a third, though still drawing a salary as a
member of the faculty, had received notice of his dismissal; and the
other two saw the futility of trying to bring the matter up again.

Also I ought to add what action the regents took. They kicked out of the university the young instructor who had been most active in preparing the report. He has written me about the circumstances of his dismissal:

Nothing specific was sent to me. But, by what chain of circumstances
need not be told, I saw with my own eyes a letter from Pierce Butler
addressed to President Burton asking for my decapitation. The neatest
thing you ever saw—not a direct order, and not even a request for my
dismissal, but a carefully worded statement to the effect that it
seemed to him (Butler) regrettable that the name of the university had
been linked up in the press with the name of myself. That was all. But
Burton sent it down the line of officials as a positive decree and my
fate at Minnesota was settled. Usually, as you perhaps are aware, the
thing is done by word of mouth only. Butler, of course, never imagined
that this letter would reach my eyes.

Mr. Butler remains grand bully of the university; but here also we are at the “big scene” in the melodrama—the villain has the heroine helpless, but in the distance we hear the galloping hoofs of the rescuer’s horses! The farmers of Minnesota with their Non-partisan League, and the workers of the cities with their unions, have got together into the Farmer-Labor party, and they have just elected their own United States senator. Before long they may also elect a governor of their state, and the University of the Ore Trust may become the University of the people of Minnesota.

P.S.—As this book is going to the printer President Harding, wishing to show the public exactly how contemptuous of public opinion it is possible for a public official to be, sends in the nomination of Grand Bully Butler for justice of the United States Supreme Court!