The Goose-step: A Study of American Education

by Upton Sinclair

I sat in one group of faculty members discussing this subject, and the conversation took a humorous turn; they started making a list of the various offenses for which a man may be fired from an American university. You may be fired if you don’t like your wife, or if your wife doesn’t like you. You may be fired if you use the word revolution, referring to anything since the eighteenth century. You may be fired if you get into a fight with the janitor. “That happened to a very distinguished botanist of my acquaintance,” said one professor. You may be fired if you go to church too little, or you may be fired if you go to church too much. I asked how the latter could be, and the explanation was that there are aristocratic universities like Harvard and Princeton and Pennsylvania, which follow the Episcopal tradition, and an excessive demonstration of piety would be highly offensive. You may be fired if you are near-sighted, and also if you are far-sighted. You may be fired if you are discovered to have Negro blood in your veins—an incident narrated by Alvin Johnson in the “New Republic,” under a thin veil of fiction. You may be fired if you undertake to prove that a candidate of the Republican party for President has Negro blood in his veins—the singular experience of Professor W. E. Chancellor of Wooster. Of course you will be fired if you are discovered in any irregular sex relationship; also you may be fired if you discover the president of your university, or one of your prominent trustees, committing a similar offense. In general, you may be fired if you depart in any way from the beaten track of propriety—and this whether your motives be the lowest or the highest, whether you are subnormal or supernormal, a crank or a genius.

And here is the all-important fact; the decision in this difficult matter lies not in the hands of your colleagues, who know you, but in some autocratic individual who is too important to know you, and too busy. Says Professor George T. Ladd of Yale University, discussing the position of the college professor:

“His whole career, and the reputation and influence which he has won by a life of self-sacrificing labor, may at any moment be in peril through the caprice, or cowardice, or ill-will of a single man, or of a little group of men who have influence with that single man.”

There are many college professors who have learned to adjust themselves to this situation, and make the best of it. They will call this book exaggerated and even absurd; but can they deny the statement of Professor Ladd above quoted? Can they deny that this is the situation in ninety-five per cent of American colleges and universities? The professors have no tenure and no security, save the kindness and good faith of those who hold the purse-strings and rule their lives. Says Professor Cattell in his book, “University Control”: “In certain departments of certain universities, instructors and junior professors are placed in a situation to which no decent domestic servant would submit.” If you will look up this book in your library you will find in it overwhelming evidence of the discontent of college professors with their status. Three hundred leading men were consulted, and out of these, eighty-five per cent agreed that the present arrangements for the government of colleges are unsatisfactory. Says James P. Munroe, for many years a professor at Massachusetts Tech:

Unless American college teachers can be assured that they are no longer to be looked upon as mere employes paid to do the bidding of men who, however courteous or however eminent, have not the faculty’s professional knowledge of the complicated problems of education, our universities will suffer increasingly from a dearth of strong men, and teaching will remain outside the pale of the really learned professions. The problem is not one of wages; for no university can become rich enough to buy the independence of any man who is really worth purchasing.

Or consider the testimony of Professor E. A. Ross, of the University of Wisconsin, in the “Publications of the American Sociological Society,” Vol. IX, 1914, p. 166:

I agree with Professor Nearing; academic asphyxiation is much more common than is generally realized. President Pritchett’s paper is, I think, far too optimistic. The dismissal of professors by no means gives the clue to the frequency of the gag in academic life. We forget the many who take their medicine and make no fuss. There, indeed, is your real tragedy. Don’t waste any pity on the men who, despite repeated hints and warnings, go ahead until they are dismissed. They will generally prove to be able to take care of themselves. Pity rather the men who, without giving sign or creating scandal, bow to the powers above and cultivate a discreet silence. There are very many of them. I know it, for many of them have come and told me with bitterness and rage of the gag that has been placed in their mouths.

Remember, too, that the source of danger is not endowment, at least if the donor has kept no strings upon his gift or is dead. It is not what has been given but what is hoped for that influences most the policy of university authorities. When a sizable donation is trembling in the balance, when an institution has been generously remembered in the will of some conservative gentleman who takes an annoying interest in the details of its life, how the governing board of the institution caters to the prejudices of the potential donor and how intolerable and unpardonable appear untimely professorial utterances or teachings which put the gift in peril!

I have before me a letter from Mr. Arthur E. Holder, who is not a college man, but a labor leader who had four years’ experience with college men, as representative of labor on the Federal Board for Vocational Education. Mr. Holder writes:

My conclusion after several years’ contact with college professors and public school teachers is that the environment of school and college life is degenerating to the male species. Outside of a bare half dozen, these men seem to be afraid to say that their souls are their own. They apparently admire boldness in others, and they applaud when another exposes the economic evils surrounding them. They do not hesitate to whisper as to their experiences; but it almost always is followed by a caution, “Don’t say I said so,” or “This is on the square,” or “This is just for yourself alone,” etc.