THE TEXAS 'BIG BOYS' THROTTLE ACADEMIC FREEDOM
Stokes, Thomas L.
The Texas 'Big Boys' Throttle Academic Freedom By THOMAS L STOKES ISSUES of academic and political freedom of far-reaching significance are involved in the dramatic situation at the University of...
...Across the middle, in big type was "JUSTICE...
...Gordon, Peach, and Foster drafted a signed statement which they sent to the Dallas News and which was published...
...They were not even permitted to talk at the meeting...
...Later, Messrs...
...Only a few years ago in another state, Georgia, an issue of academic freedom was raised, with a slightly different twist...
...The meeting was not democratically conducted—but all volunteer speakers were refused...
...The two men were Wendell Gordon and W. N. Peach...
...Umphrey Lee, and the late Rev...
...Rainey to have the budget council of the university investigate the facts...
...Rainey concluded his report on this matter with: "It is worthy of note that this same book has been selected within recent weeks as one of the five great literary productions of this generation in American literature...
...Ellis G. Arnall, corrected the situation, and the university was restored to the accredited lists...
...Is there a law which says our sons must fight only 40 hours a week or die only 40 hours a week...
...They saw the chairman of the meeting, Karl Hoblitz-elle, a moving picture magnate, and asked if one of them might address the meeting for two minutes to explain that there was no law restricting work hours to 40 hours a week, but that the act simply required overtime pay beyond those hours...
...What it all adds up to is that the "big boys" in Texas, the big interests, are trying to move in upon the university...
...W. Lee O'Daniel is the spokesman nationally, have moved furtively in on the university...
...2, 1942...
...The mass meeting was not spontaneous— but was very organized...
...A Familiar Ring The experiences of Dr...
...The ousting of Dr...
...Among other incidents, Dr...
...Three economics professors were dismissed for issuing a statement to the newspapers criticizing a mass meeting on the 40-hour week in Dallas in March, 1942, as being one-sided, as misrepresenting the 40-hour week law, and as biased against labor...
...Reinstatement of Dr...
...The board asked Dr...
...Rainey's fight has national implications...
...Because there is a law which says a man should work only 40 hours per week...
...Three members of the board which dismissed Dr...
...He enumerated 16 incidents in a comprehensive statement of the case to his faculty last Oct...
...It was announced that the vote was unanimous, but it turned out later that only six of the nine members were present, and the vote was four to two for dismissal...
...Forty hours of work...
...These interests are powerful enemies and Dr...
...the attempt, which also failed, to fire another member of the faculty because of views he had expressed, and the denial of a number of research projects...
...17, 1942, an advertisement appeared in the Dallas Morning News announcing a mass meeting for the following Sunday, labeled a "We Want Action" mass meeting...
...Their major crime seems to have been that they were "discourteous and disrespectful," according to a statement by one member of the board, Orville Bullington...
...Rainey, a native Texan, set off an explosion...
...Rainey showed considerable patience, particularly in the matter of eliminating, from a supplementary sophomore English reading course, John Dos Passos' U.S.A...
...Rainey were appointed by Sen...
...12, three weeks before he was ousted by the board...
...Protesting A Distortion The case of the economics professors gives perhaps the best clue to the state of mind which has influenced a majority of the board in its clash with Dr...
...At the university, students held protest meetings, parades, and a sitdown strike, as they rallied behind their president...
...It is clear that Dr...
...George W. Truett...
...when some regents and others objected to this novel, a study of the period following World War I. The university administration agreed to drop it...
...The discourteous and disrespectful conduct of these instructors, in my judgment, went far beyond the bounds of propriety, as well as academic freedom...
...He told also of being excluded from a meeting of the board of regents, of the dismissal of the director of.public relations, of cutting off travel expenses for professors to attend academic association meetings...
...O'Daniel when he was governor, and three others are appointees of the present governor, Coke Stevenson...
...Fair Park Auditorium] Sunday, we should like to make the following comments...
...In one corner was a drawing of three American soldiers fighting at Bataan, in the other a drawing of three buildings, one with a sign "Closed—Strike," another, "Closed—40-Hour Week," another "Closed—Holidays...
...They are agreed to by both parties, but with a difference in interpretation as to what they mean as regards academic freedom...
...They sat through the meeting, at which the principal speakers were Hoblitzelle, the Rev...
...Here are the facts about the professors...
...From a study of the case, which has now attained national significance, it seems that big economic interests in Texas, for which Sen...
...The Texas case is important nationally because it may indicate a line of attack, insidiously carried out in the field of education, that may be taken in the postwar period ahead...
...Bullington said...
...This, Dr...
...Two professors in the economics^department of the university wrote a letter to the newspaper in which they said there was no law "which restricts hours in any industry, defense or nonde-fense," and asked if they might have an opportunity to appear at the meeting and speak...
...an attempt to require every member of the faculty to sign an elaborate questionnaire, which failed...
...It was the climax of a long controversy involving his own freedom in administering affairs of the university and freedom of teachers...
...Rainey have a familiar ring: a change in the rule of tenure of professors which, he held, may make it difficult to recruit able men for the faculty...
...Rainey, though it is only one of a series of incidents beginning shortly after the president assumed office five years ago...
...On Mar...
...The board, at a meeting June 27 and 28, declined to renew »their appointments, holding they had violated the rules...
...In this course the board did not restrain economic freedom,!' Mr...
...It follows: "In connection with the allegedly spontaneous 'mass meeting' held in F.P.A...
...Rainey is being demanded as the proper solution...
...D. V. Carlson, the latter a visiting assistant professor of economics...
...In January the term of three other regents will expire, so that the governor has in his power the remaking of the board, and thus an avenue for correcting conditions in the university...
...This has put the issue up to Gov...
...Three Professors Fired The resentment spread over the state and through university circles generally, arousing those interested in freedom of education...
...Rainey said, was rejected with some such statement as, "Justice Frankfurter has already made martyrs of these two men and there is no reason to study the matter further...
...Federal Judge T. W. Davidson wrote a letter to the nine members of the board of regents complaining about the three professors...
...The board then dropped the book...
...His dismissal followed three weeks later...
...Rainey courageously laid before the faculty, Oct...
...They got no answer from the committee...
...The newspaper replied that their letter had been turned over to the committee in charge of the meeting...
...These included one for a study of the effects of the Sacco-Vanzetti case on American literature...
...On the basis of the facts, it found that the three professors acted within their rights and privileges as citizens and as teachers as defined in the rules of the university...
...They were refused...
...It was the dismissal of the three professors which brought the intercession of the American Association of University Professors, which held, after an investigation, that their dismissal constituted a violation of intellectual freedom as generally recognized and observed at accredited universities...
...A law indeed...
...All they did was issue the statement and refuse to apologize for it when asked to do so...
...The pretended fairness at the meeting was smoothly circumvented—condemning all sides in general and labor in particular...
...Rainey also recounted how some members of the board objected to a study by the Bureau of Municipal Research which showed some advantages of municipally owned utilities and were dissuaded with difficulty from cutting off funds for this bureau...
...Stevenson, who must fill these vacancies...
...The then governor, Gene Talmadge, packed the university board of trustees so he could fire two professors, which he did...
...They went to the meeting, accompanied by two other professors, Fagg Foster and Dr...
...Among other things, the advertisement said: "Factories which can turn out 1,000 instruments of war a week are only turning out 500...
...Inquiry into the history of the Texas case shows that Rainey endured an ordeal of frustration and repression from some members of the board of regents before the final blowup when he was dismissed four weeks ago...
...This was on Apr...
...Rainey's own freedom of action as president, upon the freedom of teachers, upon research, and even upon what the student should read are sprinkled through the record which Dr...
...New developments to marshal public opinion are expected shortly in the case of Dr...
...Rainey was fighting, in the background, entrenched interests which did not want too free discussion of the rights of labor and of protective legislation for labor, of municipal ownership of public utilities, or to permit comprehensive research into the social sciences or contemporary writing and thinking...
...They did not attempt to speak from the floor...
...committee action...
...The Texas 'Big Boys' Throttle Academic Freedom By THOMAS L STOKES ISSUES of academic and political freedom of far-reaching significance are involved in the dramatic situation at the University of Texas, where spokesmen for powerful interests have raided college classrooms in an effort to gag too free discussion of social and economic issues...
...His successor, present Gov...
...Three members of the nine-member board resigned...
...The university was stricken from the lists of accredited colleges, and such a furor was raised that alumni created a very effective organization all over the state and Gene Talmadge was defeated for re-election...
...In Texas, as in Georgia, one of the chief inciting acts, the issue on which the American Association of University Professors interceded, was the firing of professors...
...An anti-labor bias is clearly disclosed in the chain of events beginning about four years ago...
...Limitations and attempted limitations upon Dr...
...Homer T. Rainey, former president of the university, who was fired three weeks ago by the board of regents...
...The English committee insisted it was included by...
...Speakers were not selected on the basis of representation—but on the basis of previously assured viewpoint...
...But the board insisted on trying to find out just which professor was responsible for including it, members saying they would fire him...
Vol. 8 • December 1944 • No. 50
