Sibley At Stanford
Drinnon, Richand
DOWN ON THE FARM, as Stanford University's campus is sometimes called, an atmosphere of the leisurely past is carefully cultivated. The campus itself, sprawling across acres of precious...
...Many students at Minnesota regard Sibley as far and away the best lecturer on the campus...
...Sibley has a good position to go back to at Minnesota...
...Perhaps everything associated with a future of gigantic, superpower atom smashers will not slide in effortlessly after all...
...Not least, a series of articles on the university structure appeared in the Daily, beginning with the observation that "authority is not buttressed by wielding it as a club" and concluding by advocating a standing stu dent-faculty-administration committee to pass on, among other things, faculty appointments...
...But Stanford, although wavering between its Ivy League pretensions and its attraction to the myth of the Golden West, has decided to plant both feet squarely in our hurried nuclear present...
...Given his background and his affinity for the concrete, whether in bridges or ideas, Terman places primary reliance on the hard-headed engineers in his own School and on the nononsense empiricists in psychology, the department where his father reigned supreme for so long...
...The Stanford faculty seems able to act in concerted enthusiasm only over the question of higher salaries...
...Following solemn consideration, the Department replied that he would not...
...The campus itself, sprawling across acres of precious Peninsula real estate, seems to argue for days gone by when a university was a community of scholars and not one word was heard of strange "naval science" courses entitled, "Supply Ashore, I," "Supply Afloat, II...
...Yet the suspicion lingers that Sibley might still have been offered the appointment (there is no assurance he would have accepted) if his politics had been more conventional and his action more "discreet...
...Stew Toy, editor of the Stanford Daily, cudgeled the administration with a front page editorial charging that it "has lost sight of a university's basic goal: to educate the students...
...Sterling announced that Stanford would not offer a permanent appointment to Mulford Q. Sibley, Visiting Professor from the University of Minnesota...
...The Farm's gracious acres may soon rest over a two-mile tunnel housing a large electron accelerator...
...Other petitions demanding "the real reasons" for the administration decision were circulated...
...A student strike was even considered...
...Then Provost Frederick Terman made his move some two months after the recommendation reached the President's office: Sibley was informed that he would not be offered an appointment since he had not done enough research...
...The basic issues in the Sibley controversy are not blurred by the uncertainties which curse most such cases...
...President Stirling approved Terman's veto and denied that Sibley's political views had anything to do with the decision...
...Terman the Younger has become at one and the same time an able, rather heavyhanded Dean of the School of Engineering, Director of the Electronics Laboratory (here the future again) , and, of course, Provost...
...Not incidentally, he is a member of the Socialist Party and of the Fellowship of Reconciliation...
...This case has meaning primarily because of the student response...
...On the eve of this year's Academic Freedom Week President J. F. Wallace Sterling provided additional evidence that Stanford is hurrying to catch up with tomorrow...
...Terman has a rather interesting background as one of his father's geniuses who went on to at least partially fulfill the old intelligence tester's expectations...
...DOWN ON THE FARM, as Stanford University's campus is sometimes called, an atmosphere of the leisurely past is carefully cultivated...
...Evidently, in Terman's view the modern political scientist might as well forget Plato and de Maistre and instead chart public opinion or draft city charters, much as one of his engineers would draft plans to connect a housing project with the city sewer...
...the Terman-Stirling team have muffed an opportunity to gain a distin guished man...
...It was obviously with the thought of "looking Sibley over" for a permanent position that he was invited to Palo Alto...
...But that the privileged children of this supposedly defeated generation care enough about their freedom to fight for it, is welcome news...
...In addition to all this I must add that he has profound moral impact on those around him...
...Terman, in any case, once revealingly inquired why a political theorist was needed at all...
...Within a remarkably short time his colleagues in Political Science were so impressed that they unanimously recommended him for the opening...
...SAVE FOR AN INDISTINCT rumble or two, the matter might have come to rest at this point...
...Dean Philip H. Rhinelander of the School of Humanities and Sciences, who at first had some reservations, finally gave strong support to the recommendation...
...Finally, the San Francisco Chronicle quoted a "University figure," who declined use of his name, to the effect that while Sibley's political views were not the controlling factor, "when a person is considered for appointment, he is considered as a whole and you can't overlook any activity...
...As for his scholarship, he is coauthor of Conscription of the Conscience, a study of World War II conscientious objectors which won the American Pol itical Science Association's highest award (ironically, the Franklin Delano Roosevelt Awardl) in 1953...
...THE PROVOST is, of course, the key man here...
...Perhaps Terman's actions can be explained simply in such terms as his con flict with a fellow dean, his predilection for the concrete, his theory of centralized university control...
...A student petition, containing the names of over three hundred of those who favor Sibley's retention, was presented to the administration...
...An impressive number of students, however, were of a different mind...
...During the Political Science Department's deliberations, it is rumored, an inquiry came from the administration whether Sibley might not "embarrass" the University...
...Not only was the faculty not prepared to take a forthright stand on the issue of a possible intrusion by the administration into the realm of political views, but it was willing to accept the right of the Provost to veto a faculty appointment...
Vol. 5 • July 1958 • No. 3
