Dear Editor
DEAR; EDITOR hook Back in 1955, New Leader readers were afforded an interesting group of articles on the ethics of controversy by Sidney Hook. I was reminded of this while reading Professor Hook's...
...The late Nicholas Murray Butler defined education as "the realization of our inheritance.'' How is it possible for students to realize their inheritance if the teacher is not dedicated to mirroring it truthfully...
...Intellectual progress hinges on the student's learning-time being an integral experience...
...As Sidney Hook showed so well in his article "The Fifth Amendment: A Crucial Case" (NL, April 22), the decision to allow Slochower more civil right—a procedural liberty that seems to me relatively unimportant— was at the sacrifice of an enormously important ethical value...
...Preoccupied with expanding the civil liberties of the individual, the Supreme Court ignores these other values which experience has shown are as respectable and as much a part of our policy as the accumulation of new civil rights...
...Academic freedom's function is to make classroom veracity easy...
...He thus conveniently ignores the particular meaning accorded the term "scholarship" by Maclver (namely, the pursuit of knowledge in an academic environment) ; and that, in turn, enables him to embark on a merry binge of non-sequiturs of his own construction...
...The fact is that Koestler's book Reflections on Hanging, from which, as an accompanying editorial box explained, the article was taken, does deal with this...
...As for a potential murderer "weighing the consequences" and being deterred, Koestler does not believe this is true for the insane, or those who kill in u. sudden rage or in drunkenness (categories accounting for 80 to 90 per cent of all murders), and the statistics he quotes bear him out...
...Moreover...
...As a service to his colleagues and to keep the learning process itself from failure, the professional educator must speak...
...The supplement, "Labor in the Soviet Orbit" (NL, December 24-31, 1956), was also a fine piece of work...
...The fact that abolition of the death penalty is not followed by an increase in crime is carefully shown from the experiences of the many countries that have taken this step...
...Many additional factors are also considered, and all lead to the conclusion that the hangman is no better protection for society than prison or, where necessary, an asylum...
...Professor Hook takes repeated exception to this proposition by substituting the word "knowledge" for "scholarship...
...Koestler refutes the theory conclusively, together with the inference that abolition of this deterrence will increase the crime rate...
...When doubts arise about whether a teacher thinks classroom veracity is important, then the survival of the teaching profession depends on the suspected one doing all in his power to refute the imputation that a toucher would depart from his commitment to truth...
...Koestler makes ins point by drawing examples from Kiiiilish history, the mo^t striking being that of pickpockets plying their trade at public hangings when petty theft was a capital crime...
...Los Angeles J. P. Conneally supplements Many thanks for the June 3 supplement, "60 Years of the Jewish Daily Forward" It was the most interesting account of a newspaper I have ever read...
...In direct contradiction to the findings listed by Koestler, Lowell cites a "certain state" where capital punishment was abolished for the one, unlikely category of "wives who did away with their husbands" with supposedly dire consequences...
...One example, of several I could cite, is all that your space limitation permits...
...Indeed, the court ignored the basic ethic of the teaching profession...
...Burlington, J't...
...It is childish to nurture the growth of individual civil liberties without considering other values, as though the constant expansion of the procedural part of "due process'' at the expense of professional responsibilities were an absolute value...
...As my wife said, it made one wish he knew Yiddish and could read the paper...
...He concludes with the profound assertion that belief in these observations (his own non-sequiturs) is neither a necessary or sufficient defense of academic freedom...
...Many teachers will characterize what the obiter dicta in the Slochower case encourages as license rather than a recognizable liberty...
...but the cause of truth is hindered when academic freedom is interpreted as freeing the one who enjoys it from the obligation of proving his classroom veracity...
...But I submit that devotion to the pursuit of knowledge while in the academy does constitute a necessary defense of academic freedom, and this, it would appear to me, is what Professor Maclver said to begin with...
...This type of argument can hardly be taken seriously...
...No matter how opportune our existing standards of teacher behavior are, repudiation of them by the Court will lead to their obsolescence...
...Quite true...
...Indeed, the evidence indicates that the last two are certainly preferable if we want to be humane and avoid the possibility of executing innocent persons...
...Professor Hook quotes Maclver as follows: "The scholar cannot fulfil his obligation to the defense of academic freedom unless he is also devoted to the intrinsic values of scholarship...
...New York City G. Wachsner slochower In the Supreme Court's recent Slochower decision there was a question of a hierarchy of values...
...Professor Hook deserves our gratitude, because his article suggests that for the survival of our culture and freedom, the preservation of „ professional ethical norm may be more necessary than some of the new bourgeois liberties the Court creates...
...I submit that Professor Hook has been neither accurate nor fair in reference to Professor Maclver...
...Chicago John Switalski...
...In its obiter di-cta, the Court missed the point that a teacher's usefulness requires his declaration of this dedication as much as his actual truthfulness in the classroom...
...If Slochower prized the principal achievement for which the teaching profession can take credit — its devotion to truth—he would have come forward with the facts just as they are...
...I was reminded of this while reading Professor Hook's criticism of Robert Maclver's position regarding the relationship of epis-temology and scholarship to academic freedom ("The Old Liberalism and the New Conservatism," NL, July 8...
...One would assume that an ethical critic would be accurate in his use of a selected victim's terms, and fair in his construction of those terms...
...Such performance is more important than his academic qualifications...
...Albert C. Ettincer capital punishment In your "Dear Editor" column of July 15, Frederick E. Lowell states that capital punishment is a deterrent to murder and kidnapping and criticizes Arthur Kocstler for overlooking this point in his June 17 article "Alternative lo Capital Punishment...
Vol. 40 • August 1957 • No. 31
