THE PEOPLE'S FORUM

THE PEOPLE'S FORUM The Professors Ride Again The Editors of The Progressive sent advance proof of the editorial note in the February issue, "The Professors Ride Again," to a group of...

...No one can be sure how long this will last, though I believe that a good many professors are saddling up, as The Progressive puts it, in anticipation of riding again in the Sixties...
...On the other hand I am not sure that I would care to endorse the petition in the words in which it is framed...
...You almost say that it is the speaking out that is wonderful, irrespective of what we have to say...
...The opportunity for the study, exchange, and retention of various American cultures would certainly contribute to basic understanding...
...Of course there are honorable exceptions, and, on the whole, I think the academic profession in this field is better, not worse, than when Wendell Phillips made his famous Phi Beta Kappa address at Harvard on "The Scholar and Politics" in 1881...
...The problem of poverty has been solved to a large extent—at least by comparison with the Thirties, when that problem was the focus of the crusading liberals...
...Furthermore, society offers the scholar inducements in the form of private and public employment and of academic advancement, whose cumulative effect is well-nigh irresistible...
...If The advantages to the United States in the re-establishment of "good neighbor" relations are obvious, and, as our experiences over the past few years indicate, necessary...
...Apparently this seems to be a source of comfort...
...There were exceptions, a Ron, a Beard, a Veblen, hut several of my own teachers boasted that it was the ivory tower for them...
...Nor is there reason to doubt that Roosevelt might have wound up at the top of a sprawling organization as easily as he did at the top of the political heap...
...Every thinker begins with postulates...
...Kennedy his chance...
...Eddyville, Oregon Mayer More Than Good Dear Sirs: Permit me to express my deep appreciation for the excellence of your December number...
...The reasons for this decline of the vital critical function which at least some scholars have traditionally performed for society by letting truth speak to power, must be attributed primarily to two historic changes: one in the social context within which the scholar operates, the other in the nature of the vital issues with which society is confronted...
...Was the primitive man-centered universe really more conducive to humility...
...Similarly, the other two issues mentioned in the petition of the thirty-three—the diplomatic recognition of Communist China and East Germany—cannot be solved on the basis of meaningless generalities like idealism versus realism...
...In both cases, I should ask myself one primary question: will the diplomatic recognition of the Communist regimes in mainland China and East Germany without any substantial quid-pro-quo improve or damage the chances of maintaining peace and freedom throughout the world...
...Have you not a Constitution which outlaws such activity...
...we hope that President John F. Kennedy and Secretary of State Dean Rusk will hear us for our cause and will move to lessen the perils from atomic war and testing, and to abandon the fallacious diplomacy on China and East Germany...
...After a period in which faculties have been favorite targets of innuendo and attack, it is surprising, and heartening too, to see that there are still some who not only have convictions on public issues but are willing to express them...
...P. Cammer Huntington, New York Dear Sirs: I thoroughly agree with Hal Borland in "The Holy Days" in so far as his message was meant to be, "Stop, ye moderns...
...McReynolds' own view that whatever the Constitution outlaws, nevertheless one should be allowed to preach it...
...It is Unfinished Revolution, by Tom Kahn, a sixty-four page booklet with photographs and chronological charts of the sit-ins...
...If he wishes the public to accord his opinions greater weight than those of any other intelligent citizen, the professor should indicate that he has probed the issues with the same care and spirit of free inquiry that pervade his professional work...
...some are intelligent, some are stupid...
...Quite on the aggressive side...
...Science is more than "figures off the dials...
...The trouble with inter-group relations is that a great many people have the bad habit of comparing the best of the group with which they identify themselves with the worst of the group with whom a comparison is being made...
...Of course, professors are fair game, as they always have been, in "liberal" journals as well as the others...
...The problems that call for intellectual attention today are also more complex than they were when the petition, the protest committee, were in vogue...
...Of Unfinished Revolution A. Philip Randolph has said: "This is, I state without qualification, required reading for all who would understand where the American Negro is going and by what road...
...I remind Mr...
...And rarely have more than a reckless few been willing to risk a raise or promotion by fighting for anything much more meaningful than better secretarial service or fancier furniture in the faculty lounge...
...Anyway, there are still some who are willing to see...
...It was that personal opinions should always be kept conservative...
...She tells us that in his own words he is a Communist "by conviction and sympathy" but she fails to tell us that he is also a Christian and above all else a human being...
...One recalls World War I and that Robert M. LaFoIlette, Sr., whose name is still carried on the masthead of The Progressive, was hanged in effigy on the Wisconsin campus...
...It will still go on so long as the last-word control of professors' lives and livelihoods remains in the hands of two groups made up in the main of lunkheads...
...The answers of science are not glib ones...
...If they had been braver, McCarthyism would have been shorter lived...
...Norman Thomas New York City Dears Sirs: It is dangerous to generalize, and if "once upon a time, professors were embattled crusaders riding off to combat evil wherever it existed," I can't remember it...
...One must not carry the parallel between FJJ.R...
...McCarthy and the University of California oath ordeals are still fresh in memory...
...This is due to two causes: first, while our society may not be quite as affluent as Galbraith and others claim, our social and economic environment is worlds apart from the depression era of the 1930's...
...More particularly, big foundations, such as Ford, exert a conformist influence upon the academic community, of which many scholars are aware but which they dare mention only in whispers...
...For my money that is the only kind of idealism that is worthwhile...
...You refer to McCarthyism as "decisive in banking the fires of dissent and reform...
...For a professor may trade too easily on the public's acceptance of his authority and prestige as a professor to win support for views which he is not especially competent to express...
...The recent election campaign demonstrated this, I believe: both Kennedy and Nixon concentrated on foreign policy issues, and in his Inaugural Address President Kennedy did not talk of domestic issues at all...
...I plead with you to give the book another review, if not by someone who is better qualified to see the greatness of this piece of literature, at least by someone who can be objective, and is not crippled by his own inadequate experiences...
...All this went on long before McCarthy and his academic imitators started asking their literally subversive questions...
...It may be best for the United States to provide the capital for the program as stated but allow it to be administered through the United Nations...
...Who can blame the poor beggars (that noun I use is deliberate...
...The United States may not be able to implement this proposal because of the anti-American propaganda that is, and will continue to be, leveled against the United States government...
...But insistence on neutrality and suppression of advocacy can make teaching and scholarship sterile...
...At the end of that time, countries of Latin America which could afford to do so would contribute to the continued maintenance of the center...
...But this is simply another bad habit, which logicians call Card Stacking...
...I certainly do not write in any carping spirit, but as a non-American seeking enlightenment...
...Nor is there any doubt that F.D.R...
...Man persists in believing that in an earlier and simpler and nobler age, life was better, or men were more brave and honest, or the crime rate was lower, or at the very least man was more inner-directed and less concerned with what the Joneses think...
...Susan Mannheim New York City Disarm Guantanamo Dear Sirs: We suggest that the United States demilitarize our base at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba and establish our treaty area as a center for the technical training of the people of Latin America and as a research center for Latin American affairs and cultures...
...Bayard Rustin, Editor Liberation New York City Defends Agee Dear Sirs: Undoubtedly in choosing a person with the background of Priscilla Robertson to write the review of James Agee's Let Us Now Prake Famous Men, in the January issue, you felt that this was a person who could objectively view the book...
...If We have nothing to lose but a great deal to gain...
...The atmosphere for professors in politics today is one of sharp contrast to that of the past ten years, and the sight of faculty members and even deans flocking into Washington is an interesting and encouraging one...
...Or—to change the figure slightly and cover another point—the growing technology and wealth of our nation have caused a shortage of windmills at which to tilt...
...and organization man more than ever stresses going along with the team...
...The number of riders unhorsed does not prove that more were riding, but it is at least a hint...
...THE PEOPLE'S FORUM The Professors Ride Again The Editors of The Progressive sent advance proof of the editorial note in the February issue, "The Professors Ride Again," to a group of distinguished educators and to Norman Thomas, veteran of countless struggles for social justice...
...The statement, to which they lend the prestige of their academic positions, is mealy-mouthed...
...Such activity, it seems to me, more truly embodies that "free-wheeling inquiry and crusading militancy on the campus" whose absence you decry...
...In your account, there was once a Golden Age when professors were "embattled crusaders," full of "vibrant idealism," but in more recent years they ran out of gas...
...Professors are just as much entitled to engage in petitions and crusades as other citizens...
...That is why they prefer to polish apples instead of sell them...
...So far as China is concerned, I do believe it is extraordinary how little rational discussion there is in this country of our relationship with Red China, and I think McCarthy's intimidation had something to do with it...
...I have often speculated about this kind of thinking, and the best I can figure out is that this must be mainly a form of escapism...
...I am not sure which did the most, but in the Roosevelt years general recognition came that the professor could be a political animal, a policy maker, or a crier for reform, and still a professor...
...One should add, however, that while professors may not be doing much crusading, they are doing a lot of high level "advising...
...But shouldn't the professor do this in his role as a citizen...
...In my opinion, there is less a need for the issuance of manifestos by professors as such than there is for continuing high-caliber academic studies of our problems...
...This was the golden age of the Wisconsin Idea, but toleration of dissent among a faculty that included many celebrated liberal professors was almost nil...
...It is my impression that so far the Soviets have offered nothing approaching a satisfactory system of controls and inspection, and generalities like "near-perfect system of inspection" do not bring us nearer any solution...
...Under a President who is himself a prize-winning historian, and who invited a distinguished poet to the inauguration (incredible but true), it is likely that professors will be treated once more as first-class citizens, as they were under the two Roosevelts and Wilson...
...Miss Robertson was not able to see the book as an entity in itself, but could only compare it to her own similar experiences...
...But there is also a second reason for the shift in interest from domestic to foreign affairs...
...sometimes it may even misguide...
...The other group is the trustees, overseers, directors, whatever, of the private learning-mills—most of them bugged by any show of basic non-conformity and badly bothered by un-money-minded brains...
...Barbara Elfbrandt Clyde R. Appleton Vernon Elfbrandt Tucson, Arizona F.D.R...
...but let us at least give Mr...
...Of course, I am construing here interest and convenience in a long-term sense...
...There is nothing new, of course, in all this...
...To be successful an atmosphere of political and academic freedom must be maintained at all times...
...The scholar has become to an ever increasing extent a technician who serves the aims of society and therefore has lost awareness of his task to question those aims themselves...
...If you compare your saints, Mr...
...Of course, this always makes the comparison flattering to the one who is doing the comparing...
...It was surely but an accident of birth that made Franklin D. Roosevelt a Democrat...
...Carl A. Auerbach Professor of Law University of Wisconsin Dear Sir: The occupational pusillanimity of professors by the plethora did not, mefears, begin with McCarthy nor has it ended with him— despite your thirty-three heroic historians...
...his first chance at political office, he would have accepted— and become a Republican...
...It is true now and it has been true for a long time that the surest and safest way up for a professor is to stay with scholarly academic-journal articles and not to mix much with controversial current affairs...
...1fThe cost to the United States would be small when considered against the value to Latin American countries, the tremendous cost of maintaining the base as a military establishment, and its contribution to peace in the Western Hemisphere...
...She gives but one sentence to Agee's style of writing...
...Why should George Lincoln Rockwell be allowed to attack Jews and Negroes in Union Square...
...Like those who outlasted the French Revolution, these men have accomplished a great deal simply by surviving the Fifties...
...Editor, with the professors' devils, of course you and your kind look pretty good...
...However, it seems that any man in a gray flannel suit could have given it a more objective review...
...When I was a boy, professors seemed pretty neutral and restrained on the controversial issues of the day...
...Until World War II, the American people naturally assumed that great powers like Britain and France would defend the peace of the world against potential aggressors—at least in a first line of defense...
...It is of the utmost urgency to write Congressmen and Senators asking for an immediate investigation into this matter...
...Man has worked himself so far out on the limb of rationality" is especially objectionable, since it is pitifully obvious that, on the contrary, man so far is rational only to a dangerously small degree...
...Does he regard the closing of Union Square to Mr...
...Doesn't seem to catch our consensus...
...The second may be called The Big Stereotype...
...My point is corroborated by the petition of the thirty-three historians to which you refer in your editorial...
...Or does he think (as he appears to) that freedom of speech should be absolute in some countries and not in others...
...When it came to standing on principle to the point of sacrificing one's job or forfeiting one's career, the professional casualties exceeded those of these other professions combined...
...But I have always hoped one day to live under a Constitution which will not only outlaw racial discrimination but will outlaw any preaching of it...
...The depression, the New Deal, and World War II brought emancipation...
...They inhibit understanding and confuse thought...
...Feel the joy of life...
...We make this proposal for several reasons: If Our base at Guantanamo Bay has become the center of controversy between the governments of the United States and Cuba...
...Or is it perhaps Mr...
...The United States with its size, wealth, and power can well afford to be humble with nations which have such common interests as those in the Western Hemisphere...
...In his infinite wisdom, God seems to have distributed the basic human attributes pretty evenly in the human race...
...The fact is that our colleges and universities have become wholesale houses, dealing directly with the consumer...
...During the period in which you think "the voice of crusading idealism has been stilled on most of our campuses," individual professors have written a substantial number of well-publicized books, pamphlets, articles, and even letters to editors and have participated in innumerable open forums, offering penetrating social and political criticism...
...The line at which Soviet acceptance of some system of controls and inspection becomes acceptable is not one of liberalism versus conservatism, but of responsible common sense versus irresponsible generalities...
...His concern with these questions as a professor is not always beneficial to the community...
...The center should be free from the domination of the United States and should be geared to the needs and desires of the countries making use of the center...
...It is certainly encouraging, if it is true, that people are beginning to speak up again...
...on most of our campuses...
...It seems therefore more correct to say that the non-conformist minority, which used to give the academic community a bad name, has in recent times been absorbed into a sub-society which has become eminently respectable because its activities either tend to support the status quo or else are irrelevant to its interests...
...Machines require programmers...
...But what a sad thing Borland has done to science...
...Maybe thirty-three hundred...
...No comparable recent work probes so deeply beneath the surface of this dramatic movement and comes up with so much challenging, provocative and new thinking...
...Over more than a quarter century I've toiled and snarled (and also signed petitions and protests) among the eggheads of Academe...
...I myself live in a multi-racial society, probably the most difficult of them all...
...But what do you have, sir, when you have it...
...Mrs...
...William Ebenstein Professor of Politics Princeton University Dear Sirs: I share the sentiment of your editorial, "The Professors Ride Again...
...I suspect that the atmosphere created by the new administration will help considerably and soon to lift this cloud of timidity or apathy or conformism or withdrawal or whatever you want to call it...
...First of all, it seems to me to be too simple to contrast the conformist professor of today with the "embattled crusaders, riding off to combat evil wherever it existed," of yore...
...Hans J. Morgenthau Department of Government Harvard University Dear Sirs: I think The Progressive has a very good point that there has been an enormous suppression of free speech in the United States as a result of the McCarthy business...
...The living members of this fraternity will appreciate your support...
...Need I name them...
...Kenneth E. Lake Lawrence, Kansas Unfinished Revolution Dear Sirs: The Progressive has done such an outstanding job in reporting the student sit-in movement I am sure your readers would be interested in exploring some of the more significant implications of the Southern revolt, not only for the Negro struggle but for many of our political institutions...
...and J.F.K...
...How I wish just one professor had had nerve to answer: "I am not now nor have ever been a member of either the Communist or the Republican Party...
...With Dies, Tenney, Broyles, Ober, McCarthy, and McCarran, Truman's over-zealous security program, and the Eisenhower exaggeration of it, a premium was put on caution...
...And historically, as during the past few years, newspaper editors and politicians have always for the most part fled like scared rabbits from the issue of free speech for professors...
...In your recent editorial comment, "The Professors Ride Again," I found two common mistakes...
...Observe the fitness of the time for our holy days...
...Or it may be man's way of saying, "This is a bad, corrupt world, but once things were different—and better...
...That is why I salute those thirty-three historians—with a morituri salutamus turned the other way round...
...Well, frankly, I think the Editor of The Progressive is indulging in both the Golden Age Illusion and in The Big Stereotype...
...Instead she pokes fun at the author and takes incidents and phrases out of context, completely mutilating and misinterpreting them...
...Dear Sirs: The fact that it was necessary for you to invite my comment on your editorial, "The Professors Ride Again," rather than for me to grab my pen immediately upon reading your words (as some University of Wisconsin presidents of the past might have done) is evidence, in itself, I suppose, of what you have chosen to believe is the stilling of the "voice of crusading idealism...
...In my file is an address which I delivered to the Teachers Union thirty years ago, observing: "Many are convinced that active participation in community affairs and frank expression of a point of view destroy objectivity in teaching...
...I do not believe that the voice of crusading idealism has been "stifled" on our campuses, but the problems confronting us defy a simple solution by crusading idealism...
...The same might be true of recognition of East Germany...
...And anyone who covets nomination to "profiles of courage" needs to be asked how well he would have measured during the Thirties in Germany against Nazi savagery or during the Sixties in Georgia against racehatred mobbery...
...May I draw their attention to a new work on the sit-ins which many prominent civil rights leaders have hailed as the most perceptive depth analysis of American race relations to have appeared in many years...
...The most important change in American life since the end of World War II has been the shift of interest from domestic to foreign issues...
...Undoubtedly intended to give the impression, which you apparently received, that they favor certain foreign policies, the statement in fact merely says that "the United States can no longer postpone active consideration" of these policies—a view with which hardly anyone can disagree...
...As the middleman who processes and packages the professor's views for retailing to the people and to lawmakers, the journalist's business has fallen off...
...Mrs...
...The professional record, I submit, stands comparison well, and all the more so when it is remembered that by the nature of his calling the scholar must spend a fair amount of time in solitary—in his library, laboratory, or study—in other words, in the ivory tower...
...Now, you are glad to note, a few are beginning to speak up again...
...We are told that Wendell Phillips, speaking before the Harvard Phi Beta Kappa in 1881, deplored what he regarded as the unresponsiveness of scholars to the great reform movements of his time...
...This is the great simplifier, and spares man the heavy burden of making intelligent distinctions among people who are in fact distinguishable...
...Meyer that the situation was little different in 1932...
...However, a careful reading of their statement reveals that the historians did not commit themselves to anything...
...Nevertheless, your editorial is a good one...
...Professors are a numerous class...
...Not so...
...Harold M. Groves Professor of Economics University of Wisconsin Dear Sirs: I agree that it is a good sign to see professors' names in print again, especially when attached to opinions on vital issues...
...A more effective method would be for him to telephone one of his dozen or so policy-making colleagues in Washington and make his suggestion...
...Their comments appear below.—The Editors...
...Milton Mayer's article, "As It Is In Heaven," deserves the highest praise...
...This juxtaposition derives from an idealization of the past, at the very least not fully supported by historic evidence...
...I suspect that you will get about the same distribution of human traits among magazine editors that you will find among professors...
...As a result of modern astronomy, the universe seems to me to be more marvelous than a universe centered on man...
...For I can't help wondering how many of them will now climb how far how fast, in terms of career and salary, compared to their unsign-ing fellows...
...For they know full well that once they step across a polite institutional line, once they raise their voices too loudly over the clatter of tea-cups or watered martinis, they are marked men...
...Yet, a change has occurred in the intellectual climate in this country, but I should put the nature of the change in less dramatic and oversimplified terms...
...It would seem quite unnecessary today, for example, for a Harvard professor to sign a petition urging upon the government some reform...
...During the McCarthy time I visited many colleges, and everywhere certain groups of professors lamented McCarthyism and exaggerated its dangers to themselves and their own courage in meeting it...
...the latter is inaccessible to our direct moral judgment, comprehension, and manipulation and can be dealt with only in a sophisticated if not esoteric manner...
...Dear Sirs: Writing in the January Progressive, Karl E. Meyer laments the fact that "in 1960, the American people had to choose between two candidates who, except for accidents of birth and local circumstance, might have wound up in the other's party, or in one of the sprawling organizations that now sets the tone of American life...
...However, the climate for academics has improved considerably over the past few months with the approaching installation of the new Administration...
...The Big Stereotype is probably more pervasive and obnoxious in our world than the Golden Age Illusion...
...If The establishment of a Latin American University would make a great contribution to the exchange of information, knowledge, and ideas among nations in the Western Hemisphere...
...We were sicker than we knew, as a society, and since for a substantial part of the past decade intellectuals were considered subversive and "too much education" dangerous to the state, it will be some time before the academic profession feels it fully safe to venture out again...
...I am not sure this would be just a quibble or a trivial reason for not signing such a petition, even though I am in sympathy with its general direction...
...The United States would provide monies for the staffing and maintenance of the center for a period of, say, ten years...
...There is a difference in kind between, say, the issue of the Yellow Dog Contract, and the issue of the supranational control of nuclear power...
...What the foolhardy few are marked for is a sort of invisible purple heart for injury to career—an award that is often posthumously bestowed...
...Professors have written and spoken on controversial issues in the last ten years, and have actively participated in Presidential campaigns...
...As one who has contended for a long time that farmers have been subsidizing the national economy, I hope that the Kennedy Administration will lead the public to an appreciation of the true state of affairs before a solution of the "farm problem" is attempted...
...It is more than just good...
...In the course of complimenting us, you go farther than I think is accurate in asserting that professors en masse have sunk back into a long and deadening silence...
...How many historians, might I ask, declined to sign the petition...
...The extensive use of aircraft and aircraft carriers and the closeness of bases in Florida and Puerto Rico make the Cuban base expensive and unnecessary...
...some are conformists, others possess great civic courage...
...more often it is incorporated in the laws of the land...
...Consider the world whole...
...Perhaps he will fulfill the promise that even Meyer admits he showed during the campaign...
...Contemplate the beauty of the natural world...
...I do not know that it is necessarily desirable to give recognition of Red China "as a step in the quest for a peaceful solution" rather than offering it as a quid pro quo and a part of a general settlement...
...If The base, as a military establishment, is expendable in that it is no longer necessary for the defense of the United States or the Panama Canal...
...My own reaction to the second two of the three points mentioned in the petition would be a case in point...
...I believe that the record, if we can search it out, will show that they as a group put up a stouter resistance than did these other professions...
...You might wonder the same about me for simply wondering...
...Or does your Constitution merely outlaw racial discrimination, and yet allow anyone to preach it...
...My suggestion, then, is this: stop baiting the professors...
...It goes on today...
...and J.F.K...
...They are a group of human beings, and like all groups of human beings, they vary...
...But professors have also a special responsibility to think clearly...
...Since the professors you praise took their stand as historians, it would be interesting to know why each of them thinks he is specially qualified, as an historian, to express opinions about arms control and the diplomatic recognition of Red China and East Germany...
...Relax your ceaseless analysis...
...I am not sure the premise is correct, if one is to believe the systematic studies on this subject by Lazars-feld and others, and if one relies on limited personal impressions...
...The recent record is depressingly familiar...
...One of them is the increasing complexities of the issues, so that people are much less ready to feel that they know the answer than they were thirty years ago...
...The first may be called The Golden Age Illusion...
...had urged Hoover to run for the Presidency in 1920—as a Democrat...
...May it help toward our awakening of "the beginning of new things," or to "the discovery of old...
...Some are good, some are wicked...
...C. A. Elvehjem President University of Wisconsin Dear Sirs: That the academic community during the last decade or so has been conspicuous by its conformity is hardly open to doubt...
...The riding professors attack the American "insistence upon priority for a near-perfect system of inspection and control" with respect to the banning of nuclear tests...
...For the academic crusaders have always been in a minority, frequently expelled from the academic community when their crusading zeal became either personally obnoxious or touched too sensitive a nerve connecting the academic community with the powers-that-be...
...Daniel Markewich Cambridge, Massachusetts...
...Since World War II, practically all Americans realize that the United States is now in the first line of defense, and that the survival of this country depends largely, if not wholly, on American thought and effort...
...Is he urging a freedom of speech, while consenting to a restriction of action...
...She fails to tell the reader of his poetic prose which flows with strength throughout the book, or of his intelligent perceptiveness, or of his deep sensitivity to life...
...I suspect there were as many timid and conformist professors "once upon a time" as there are today...
...We will never know everything...
...The great issues of our age are both remote from individual experience and difficult to understand and manipulate...
...John W. Cauchey Professor of History University of California at Los Angeles Alan Paton Objects Dear Sirs: I am a admirer of The Progressive and it was with interest I read David McReynolds' article, "Hitler in New York," in your December issue...
...It was in McCarthy's time that I was most critical of liberals in general and many professors in particular...
...If intellectuals in our time have been taking a decreasingly active part in democratic and human struggles (which I doubt), the reasons, as you suggest, are not hard to find: general insecurity and fear are sustained by the cold war...
...Socrates remarked to the effect that the reformer always lives in some suspense, and that "theTe is no saying what may happen to such a man...
...As I see it, the fact remains that the present unnecessarily high level of world irrationality will be lowered not by irrelevant myths, be they beautiful or ugJy, but by more science used responsibly...
...David Fellman Professor of Political Science University of Wisconsin Dear Sirs: I want to express a deep doubt that professors have been relatively silent on controversial issues in recent years...
...Every prudent man, with or without a Ph.D., was tempted to avoid nonconformity like the plague...
...A sporting regard for fairness in presentation and for the opportunity of all sides to be heard is the sort of objectivity that should be cultivated...
...nor is there much doubt that had the Republicans, rather than the Democrats, offered F.D.R...
...Sherrill Perry San Francisco, California Urges Anti-Cuba Probe Dear Sirs: The freedom of Cuban anti:Castro exiles to indulge in such counter-revolutionary activities as guerrilla training and gun running, in clear violation of their right to asylum in this country, as well as the ever increasing stories about the CIA training guerrilla fighters in Guatemala, clearly constitute behavior contrary to the hemispheric doctrine of non-intervention into the internal affairs of another country...
...It is convenient to blame "fishy-eyed machines" instead of our misuse of them, to inveigh against science in general instead of against its destructive use...
...H. R. Glascock, Sr...
...That is why our "idealism" (your word) is addressed to the "realities" (our word...
...Socrates knew whereof he spoke, and since education always will be a kind of moral reform, professors still can't say what will happen to them...
...And it is good for education and the country that a substantial minority has never heeded a lot of warnings and that most of them have "gotten away with it...
...What does that have to do with crusading idealism...
...What a strange idea that to a person with a theory of the sky, the sky is less beautiful...
...Controversial chap, isn't he...
...Russel B. Nye Department of English Michigan State University Dear Sirs: It is true that professors have been much less vocal than they used to be, at least in the New Deal era...
...some are kids, some suicidal maniacs, some of us are imbeciles, some adults...
...I think there are about 150,000 of them in this country today...
...On the other hand, I believe that when the pressure was on, in the Age of Universal Suspicion, there were as many courageous professors as there were before and as there are today...
...the praise it bestows upon the promoters and signers of a very timely and sensible letter to the President is well warranted...
...Increasingly seldom is the professor's view headlined (and ridiculed) in the press...
...Mathematics originates with a thinker...
...What factual evidence do you have for such a sweeping generalization...
...The strength of this new and dangerous movement to discuss and advocate "arms control," not as a means toward the goal of disarmament, but as a substitute for it, lies in some of our universities...
...Am I therefore making an invalid exception to an absolute principle, merely because I am prejudiced in that particular direction...
...Simultaneously I believe in freedom of speech, and have lost freedom of movement as a consequence...
...One of man's most persistent habits is that of indulging in the assumption that in the good old days things were different—and better...
...Like any other numerous class, there are all kinds of professors...
...Anyone who takes the time to look into the late Professor Howard Beale's history of academic freedom, for example, or any of several similar studies, knows that professors traditionally have had a hard time when they talked off-campus about public issues, whether their opinions concerned the propriety of slavery, the acceptability of the evolutionary hypothesis, or the public ownership of utilities...
...You state in your editorial that "in more recent years, however, the voice of crusading idealism has been stifled on most of our campuses...
...Unfinished Revolution sells for fifty cents and may be ordered from Roodenko Printers, 36 East 10th Street, New York 3, New York...
...Yet even if the social context were conducive to the expression of radical dissent, the nature of the issues we are facing would make the formulation of such dissent extremely difficult...
...Yes, the strident haranguing of the idealists is heard less and less, these days, but the idealism is as alive as ever...
...Alma H. Thomas Montclair, New Jersey 'The Holy Days' Dear Sirs: With reference to Hal Borland's "The Holy Days" in your January issue, it seems to me that much in this sugary, muddled piece deserves some objective comment...
...The significance of this fact and its causes are less clearly discernible...
...Aren't primitive peoples just a little more certain than we that they know the answers...
...A professor at another institution, not as well represented in Washington, is more inclined today to write a book detailing his suggestion, backing it with data, precedent, and example—for the type of leaders America has developed prefer to read and reason, and are not as likely to be swayed by ringing, emotional proclamations as they once were...
...Furthermore, on the secondary issue of what was done about the firings and banishments, professors at large, individually and in their organizations, swarmed out to protest and to try to protect...
...Alan Paton Natal, South Africa The Truth about Farmers Dear Sirs: I want to compliment you on your editorial, "Land of Subsidy," in the January issue...
...Richard Hofstadter Department of History Columbia University Dear Sirs: In "The Professors Ride Again" you give more praise than we thirty-three historians probably deserve...
...The memory is still fresh of a nationally-syndicated columnist pointing out to his readers that a majority of those accused in one investigation had taken graduate work (leaving the inference clear), or of another taking a teacher to task for quoting Jefferson, whose opinions might be "seriously unsettling to young minds...
...And, let it be «aid for today's professor, his well-modulated voice and well-reasoned opinions are heard more often in the testimony before legislatures and Congress than ever was the case in the dear dead days to which you hark...
...One is the state legislators—most of them most mistrustful of brains and frightened to death of non-conformity...
...I can appreciate your concern, as a journalist, for this change...
...Not that professors are not money-minded —in their own rather small-change way...
...When I complained to the company, the author of the pamphlet said that they had circulated 450,000, or some such enormous figure, covering most of our colleges and universities, and that no professor had ever said a word—why was I kicking...
...All three points of the petition deal with foreign policy issues, in which the old labels of liberal and conservative have little meaning...
...One of man's worst habits is to lump all members of a certain class together—all Negroes, or all bankers, or all trade unionists, or all Fifth Monarchy men or all members of Rotary...
...And a blow at timidity and conformity in college circles is always in order...
...Rockwell as a greater offense against America than the calumniation of Jews and Negroes...
...It is natural that he might presume that the supply has diminished...
...I am inclined to believe that we have learned that there are more ways of leading a hone to water than beating him over the head, though we still have not solved completely the problem of making him drink...
...Its author is himself a young man with an extraordinary background in student and adult civil rights efforts...
...I am convinced that the after-effects of McCarthyism have something to do with it, but that there are other things that come into play...
...In this respect, the decline of the academic commitment to great issues is but a particular manifestation of a phenomenon which is characteristic of our over-all political and social life...
...This question cannot be solved on the basis of a dogma, either that these two regimes must immediately be diplomatically recognized, or that they must never be recognized...
...As The Progressive notes, the silence of the academic profession over the past few years has been part of the McCarthy syndrome, some of which still lingers...
...And thus, if you will, every rational theory is based upon faith...
...The Golden Age Illusion and The Big Stereotype are snares and delusions...
...Does he believe that freedom of speech should be subject to no kind of restriction whatsoever...
...Harold C. Urey Professor of Science and Engineering University of California Dear Sirs: Of course the professor should interest himself in today's political and social issues —even when they do not fall within his special field...
...the military, never at home with dissent, is now greatly expanded...
...You can find what you are looking for, I suppose...
...It was precisely in this period that a college student at Princeton, not a professor, made public an extraordinary exhortation in the recruiting pamphlet given out to the students by Socony Mobil...
...But did professors in these last dozen dark years go more silent, more craven, than the doctors, lawyers, preachers, or journalists...
...Unfinished Revolution provides an indispensable bibliography and a brief history of Jim Crow, and features forewords by Reverend James Lawson and Norman Thomas...
...The facts speak for themselves in support of your criticism of a great many professors...
...In contrast, what did the American Medical Association do on the purge at Cedars of Lebanon, the American Bar Association on the lawyers disbarred for their politics, the church at large on behalf of the Reverend Willard Uphaus, or the national press when Senator James Eastland was carrying out his vendetta against the New York Times...
...Recognition of one government by another is not a matter of morals or even law, but of convenience and interest...
...Is it less imaginative of us moderns to propose relativity theory, evolutionary theory, psychoanalytic theory, population and other theories...
...too far...
...If As long as we maintain a military base in Cuba it will continue to be an aggravating issue to the people of Cuba, irrespective of who heads the government...
...Fred Rodell Professor of Law Yale University Dear Sirs: In the field of social and political thinking, one runs into certain rather typical errors over and over again...
...The former appeals to the individual's sense of justice and is susceptible to his understanding and manipulation...
...All of us are not "kids in a great big sand box...

Vol. 25 • March 1961 • No. 3


 
Developed by
Kanda Sofware
  Kanda Software, Inc.