The students at Clark maintain a Liberal Club, and invite speakers of all points of view to discuss public questions before them. They are accustomed to question these men and tear their arguments to pieces, and if the men cannot thoroughly document their statements, they have an unhappy time. That the students really conduct an open forum is proven by the fact that they brought not merely Harry Laidler to defend Socialism, but the Reverend Murlin, president of Boston University, to speak against it. They invited Frank Tannenbaum to defend the radical movement, and they invited the Reverend Dr. Wyland of Worcester to denounce it. Dr. Wyland’s point of view on social questions is sufficiently revealed by the fact that in the Worcester “Telegram” he referred to Scott Nearing’s “licentious and seditious utterances”—and this without having attended Nearing’s lecture!
It was early in 1922 that the Liberal Club announced a coming lecture by Scott Nearing, and obtained President Atwood’s consent for it. A few days before the lecture President Atwood summoned the president of the club, and told him that there was to be a geography lecture that evening and asked that the Nearing address be shifted to a different and smaller hall. President Atwood himself, of course, went to the geography lecture; when it was over he came to the hall where Nearing had been speaking for an hour and a half to some three hundred people. I am told that on the steps of the building he met a high-up society lady of Worcester, wife of one of the interlocking directors. This lady was trembling with indignation, and told President Atwood about the horrible thing that was going on in the hall—a Bolshevist speaker was shamelessly defaming the American people.
President Atwood went in, and listened to the address for about three minutes. Scott Nearing was discussing the control of American intellectual life by the plutocracy, and, as it happened, he had just got to the subject of educational institutions, and was describing the contents of “The Higher Learning in America,” by Thorstein Veblen—who happens to be Atwood’s brother-in-law. Atwood listened, and his bosom swelled. Some poet has described Opportunity as a beautiful caparisoned white horse, which gallops by and stops for a moment in front of a man, and then gallops on. At this moment Atwood perceived that the steed had halted before him; here was the way to make the Frye-Atwood geographies known, not merely to all the schoolmarms of the United States, but to all leaders of patriotic thought all over the world! President Atwood leaped upon the horse—and rode into the limelight!
What he did was to rise up in the audience, and tell the president of the Liberal Club to stop the lecture. He had to repeat this several times before the bewildered student got his meaning; then the student went upon the platform and told Nearing to stop, and Nearing politely did so. In talking about the matter with Nearing, I told him that I thought he had made a mistake; he should have insisted upon his right to finish his lecture—and I was assured by students at Clark that if he had done this, the audience would have politely put the president of the university out of the hall. But it didn’t happen that way; Nearing stopped, and President Atwood went to the front of the platform and informed the audience that the meeting was dismissed. He said this three times, while the amazed people stared at him. He turned and instructed the janitor to “blink” the lights, so as to compel the audience to leave.
There were half a dozen of the faculty present, also the venerable scholar, ex-President G. Stanley Hall. One of the professors came forward and remarked that it seemed rather late to dismiss the meeting. President Atwood answered: “We can’t have these things going on here.”
“Why not?” asked the professor.
“This is no proper audience to hear such remarks.”
“But the audience consists of at least fifty percent college men.”
“Yes,” said President Atwood, “that’s the worst of it.” And he pounded on the wall in his excitement. “This kind of thing must be stopped! I am going to crush it with every means in my power!”
The author of the Frye-Atwood geographies was new to Clark University, and does not possess the mentality to understand the place; he was genuinely bewildered by the uproar which followed. The students called mass meetings of protest; they organized and appointed committees, and proceeded in vigorous and determined fashion to make good their right of free speech. The incident, of course, was telegraphed all over the country, and brought back upon the head of the unhappy physiographer a storm of ridicule and denunciation. He fled from it, and shut himself up in his house. The student committee could not get access to him; but finally they dug him out, and put him on the griddle.