"Let There Be No Doubt"

One morning last week 800 members of Columbia University's faculty gathered in the dark, gloomy McMillin Theatre on their campus. They were puzzled, apprehensive. Summoned by 78-year-old President Nicholas ("Miraculous") Murray Butler to an unprecedented convocation of the whole faculty, the professors buzzed with speculation about the meeting's purpose. Some concluded that President Butler was about to announce a salary cut.

Dr. Butler had broader matters in mind. He had summoned them, he said, to tell how Columbia University meant to cooperate with the Government "to strengthen the nation's defense." He proceeded to outline steps already taken, to urge his faculty "to guide public opinion into paths of reason, of reflection and of understanding."

A few professors dozed.

President Butler went on to repeat, in almost the identical words of his 1935 annual report, his views on academic freedom. His professors, aware that 1940 was not 1935 and that Dr. Butler had not called the extraordinary meeting for nothing, pricked up their ears. They heard:

"Before and above academic freedom of any kind or sort comes . . . university freedom, which is the right and obligation of the university itself to pursue its high ideals unhampered and unembarrassed by conduct on the part of any of its members which tends to damage its reputation. . . . Those whose convictions are of such a character as to bring their conduct in open conflict with the university's freedom to go its way toward its lofty aim should, in ordinary self-respect, withdraw of their own accord from university membership. . . . No reasonable person would insist upon remaining a member of a church, for instance, who spent his time in publicly denying and denouncing its principles and doctrines."

By that time, Dr. Butler's faculty had begun to get the point. They knew well that 23 years before, Dr. Butler had made a similar pronouncement, had fired Professors James McKeen Cattell and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana* for extracurricular opposition to U. S. participation in World War I. Dr. Butler perorated:

"Behind the war of conflicting political doctrines . . . there lies the war between beasts and human beings. . . . Let there be no doubt where Columbia University stands in that war."

Next day a storm broke around President Butler's old white head. Mildest comment was by Columbia's Professor-emeritus John Dewey, who observed that Dr. Butler's statement was "identical, as far as it goes, with totalitarianism," concluded that Dr. Butler could not have meant what he said. Less gentle were H. G. Wells, the Columbia Spectator, the Teachers Union, a host of other commentators. Said the Rev. John Haynes Holmes, pastor of Manhattan's Community Church: "He has taken Columbia into the European war before the Government has gone in." The New York Herald Tribune hissed: "L'Universite, c'est moil" On the bulletin board of Columbia's Law School appeared a scrawl: "Heil Butler!"

On the floor of the U. S. Senate, Dr. Butler was spattered with billingsgate.

Cried Isolationist Senator Bennett Champ Clark: "Outrageous proposition . . . senile, reactionary president of Columbia . . . pothouse Republican politician." On the Columbia campus, meanwhile, eight professors (including Anthropologist Franz Boas, Economist Wesley Mitchell, Sociologist Robert Lynd, Chemist Harold Urey) asked their president to clarify his views on their freedom.

*Professor Charles Beard, who did not oppose the war, resigned over the academic-freedom issue.

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