First Things First

Pacifism and Saint Gandhi brought dismissal to a U. S. college professor last week. As many a like incident has done before, this raised hue & cry in academic circles and in the Liberal press. Professor Herbert Adolphus Miller, head of the sociology department of Ohio State University, went last year to India. He spoke to the Gandhites on the eve of their famed salt march. Last month Ohio State students were agitating against compulsory military training. Professor Miller actively supported them and voted with the faculty (83-10-79) to ask the university's trustees to make military drill optional. Soon the State House of Representatives received a resolution calling for an investigation of charges that the agitation was fomented by Communists--even perhaps by Moscow itself. Heartily the faculty reneged, voted 144-10-9 to ask no change in the drill ruling.

Ousted was Professor Miller last week. At first he said that his Gandhite sympathies and his opposition to drill had nothing to do with it, that Julius Stone, board chairman of the trustees, wanted him out "regardless of the wishes of the faculty." Then, confidently, he said: "I am a man who speaks positively and freely on matters, but I am no radical. I have been dropped from the faculty because I have spoken freely."

Said President George Washington Rightmire of Ohio State: "A great university is here within our grasp if we will attend only to the big worthwhile projects, and put first things first."

A "first thing" to the American Association of University Professors is academic freedom: last week its local chapter was considering investigation.

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