Writing Up Alma Mater
WRITING UP ALMA MATER EVEN the hardest headed among business men will concede the importance of the modern university. Even though it were concerned only with much ado about nothing, as several...
...Morison's book is very much to the point here: "To its abiding honor Harvard left Professor Hugo Munsterberg absolute freedom of speech, in spite of popular clamor, President Lowell insisting that if we censored certain utterances of a professor we tacitly assumed responsibility for what we did not censor...
...There must come to be a Catholic Harvard...
...What can the university do for the student and the teacher...
...If there were question merely of methods of teaching students how to speak and write these myriad tongues, one might find here a virtually inexhaustible fund of reference material...
...Ultimately, however, they amount to two beliefs: that the student has a desire to grow in the right direction, and that he can grow in the right direction if not interfered with...
...The university is necessarily a corporation lived in for its own sake and exacting its specific hygiene...
...Or rather, perhaps, it is not the vegetable kingdom but an organism...
...To think of the Widener, Shaw, White, Nolen and Lowell donations is to lose oneself in the contemplation of bookish treasures...
...One sees Catholic education as something quite new and incomparably vigorous, therefore...
...One passage in Mr...
...Later on Harvard was quick to challenge this doctrine, so that the university as administered by President Lowell has been, in some measure, a laboratory in which repudiation of elective principles has been subjected to constant tests...
...Nor must we overlook the accumulation of equipment upon which this activity is so largely based...
...One finds it difficult to think of a more American understanding of the problem, or of a wiser tactfulness in dealing with it...
...Turn now to the problem of administering this highly distinctive state, inside which mutual criticism is a dominant factor...
...Twenty-five years may not be too late, but twenty-five years would be a lot of time to waste...
...The attitude here exemplified seems to characterize a university which, though it has a certain corporate mind, leaves the individual instructor free to think and teach as he sees fit...
...In every case the expenditure of wealth, personal influence and meticulous care has been virtually prodigal...
...The central concern is human nature...
...and, finally, the "drive" toward knowledge which this whole endeavor has supported...
...There is no leadership which swings public benevolence to the aid of a single higher educational task...
...The story of modern languages at Harvard may be taken as an illuminating example...
...On this score only one thing need be said...
...The Harvard Library contained 287,000 volumes and pamphlets in 1880...
...No arrows point to any particular spot...
...President Eliot had left this virtually unlimited, intellectually speaking...
...It is not a system but a place...
...Generosity has not been ardent in their behalf...
...All these universities taken together have neither the historical importance nor the varied resources of Harvard...
...The rub comes from an entirely different source...
...But a dozen other topics likewise suggest themselves-the efficacy of a series of forceful teachers, the vigor of whose speech has been felt far beyond the classroom...
...Morison's book, dwarfs even the weekly activities of the stock exchange...
...The life upon which it feeds did not begin until after 1850, and during the half-century which followed the struggle was mostly an uphill fight against poverty and for essential ecclesiastical needs...
...Harvard is at once individual and representative...
...Today it has six times that many, and the business of superintending this vast deposit costs $250,000 annually...
...And so, one feels, every Catholic must face the problem of building up somewhere one university which, taken by itself and quite apart from all other considerations, is complete and challenging...
...Having the advantage of comparative maturity, it has also been the scene of fundamental and furious modern educational debates...
...But-and the point cannot be too frequently emphasized-this future is at stake now...
...Multiply this record by thirty-eight, and the sum-total of what has been happening in this section of academia virtually baffles the spectator's imagination...
...First of all a social unity, derivative from a faith which is also love...
...The library is, we are told, "a veritable mosaic of gifts, and every volume that one takes up reveals by its book-plate the story of some gift or bequest...
...To how great an extent are these properly autonomous...
...the value of research and written comment, which has affected a hundred aspects of thought and study...
...Even though it were concerned only with much ado about nothing, as several among its enemies declare, that "nothing" has captivated the national spirit...
...Circumstances have hampered development...
...The problem of how to get support for such a university is no longer a stumbling block...
...If that soaked in, tranquil slumber might be more difficult for us than is the case now...
...The publication of a history of Harvard University from 1869 to 1929, by Samuel Eliot Morison, is sure to help us here...
...the significance of a constant stream of exchange professors, including not a few of the most prominent European authors...
...First comes student liberty...
...Here government is only secondarily an affair of custodianship...
...Such a system runs the risk, to be sure, of suffering from potential professorial insanities...
...It is time to realize this fact...
...and a laboratory for the study of animal behavior...
...One is impressed immediately by the remarkable diversity of the university's work...
...The basic element in any reply to these queries is the conception of liberty, and liberty seems to affect three large departments of human activity...
...Since 1900 the curve has swung upward rapidly, attaining after the war to a really impressive incidence...
...What matters now is to secure accurate insight into the development and status of this importance-to see the university world functioning according to its own laws and in consonance with its own rhythm...
...The Catholic university has something to offer...
...They can build one university quite easily...
...But the mass effect of these possessions, as one finds them enumerated in Mr...
...It is from now on that a fair estimate of success or failure is in order...
...Historically speaking, therefore, this experience is of immense informative value...
...And of course the library is only one detail...
...but the effect of these is easily suppressed by the body politic, which on the other hand would be wrecked by rebellions against autocracy...
...But we must not forget that the story of Catholic university education in this country lies in the future...
...It is essential to understand, however, that religion and education are not the same thing...
...When we set the realities of existing Catholic universities in the United States against this picture they are likely to seem small, indeed, and in constant peril...
...Secondly, an innate humanistic scepticism, based on the circumstance that knowledge is seen to be something which is always partly faith...
...Thirdly, a background-a source-which is not only about one-fifth of the country's total population but has as yet hardly been tapped for intellectual energy...
...Nothing need be added regarding the Fogg, Peabody and Germanic museums, all of which are well known to the general public...
...an experimental garden near Soledad, Cuba...
...It would do no little good if every Catholic legitimately interested in this matter were to sit down and read carefully the inaugural address which President Lowell delivered on October 6, 1909...
...The University owns a forest of 2,100 acres, utilized by those who study the life and lore of trees...
...The Catholic educational system is as defective without a university centre as a wheel is without a hub...
...Nor could they have...
...And once it has been realized, the future is in the hands of those who act rightly...
...Catholics-like unto the rest of humanity in this respect-cannot expect to build universities here, there and yonder...
...The assumptions upon which the elective system was founded have been diversely stated and expounded...
...The second and third departments of liberty may be summed up together as professorial freedom and institutional freedom...
...a collection of works on mediaeval philosophy comparable with that of the Vatican...
...a collection of portraits of English judges from the reign of Edward VI...
...Morison has gathered the narrative of thirty-eight distinct institutions inside the one unit, the range being all the way from the department of philosophy to the school of public health...
Vol. 11 • April 1930 • No. 23
