TEACHERS AS CITIZENS
Thomson, James C Jr.
Teachers as Citizens The end of the American academic year has brought its annual spate of oratory, most of it florid, flabby, and better forgotten. There were notable exceptions, as always, among...
...For if the teacher, at last, ceases to speak his mind as citizen as well as educator, then is the cause of freedom in severe jeopardy...
...We have heard much in recent days of( the duties and obligations of scholars...
...We are told, rightly enough, that they cannot be immune from basic demands of loyal citizenship...
...Where other colleges have barred him, Yale has tolerated the suspect guest lecturer...
...There are some at Yale who would relegate the role of the teacher to the narrow confines of the classroom, who grow anxious in the face of so-called 'extra-curricular' activities on the part of professors...
...Excerpts: "These have been years in which blind and unthinking anti-Communism as a totally negative force has more and more violently manifested itself in an-ti-intellectualism and in a deep-set suspicion of the nation's institutions of learning . . . Teacher after teacher has been ruined by inquisitions which allow for no appeal...
...Where other colleges have fired him, Yale has retained the accused professor...
...These men are denying a vital function of the teacher in society...
...There were notable exceptions, as always, among them some refreshingly American (old-style) reflections on academic freedom by James C. Thomson, Jr., student chairman of the 1953 Board of the Yede Daily News, at the News' 75th anniversary banquet...
...For to the citizen, whether professor of classics or industrial riveter, no aspect of his country's welfare can be 'extra-curricular.' No profession can impose a limitation on the citizenship requirements of its members —least of all the academic profession...
...College after college has acquiesced in the counsels of the ignorant and the timid . . . "The air at Yale is still free...
...But we have not heard enough of their bounden duty as citizens to speak out on issues which affect the well-being of the general society...
...Its undergraduate and graduate classrooms are still as ever un-policed chambers for the expression of the controversial view...
...The danger arising from the counsellors of fear, of reticence in the face of fire, is compounded by the nature of a society demanding conformity...
Vol. 17 • July 1953 • No. 7
