I am greatly interested in the subject of the book which you are preparing, and I gladly give you my answer to the questions contained in your circular, with the definite understanding, however, that you will not mention my name as the source of information, or in any other way disclose my identity. The mere fact that as a matter of self-preservation and of protection to my family I feel compelled to make this proviso—disgusting as otherwise it is to me both as a man and a scholar—is proof sufficient of the control which special privilege exercises over educators in this country.
And here is one more letter, perhaps the most significant of all. The writer is a young scientist, who got his training at the University of Wisconsin, where for two years he took part in the activities of the liberal students. He tells me the effect which these two years have produced upon all his later career. Read his analysis of “academic freedom” among scientists; it covers the case completely, and every fairminded scientific man who reads it will be forced to admit that it is as exact as it is painful.
My position was student assistant, a half time instructorship. I stayed at Dr. P——’s house two years, and my relations with all the faculty of that department were intimate and cordial always, and still are. I was known as a rather harmless and intellectualized radical, and as rather a hard worker, one who spent long hours in his laboratory and applied himself assiduously: being especially useful around a scientific department by reason of ingenuity with apparatus. A sufficiency of all the technical virtues, you see, and the result was that I was very well thought of. A taste for sociology and radical discussion was looked upon as an amiable and altruistic weakness, which might serve to give my biology a humanistic turn....
No specific thing has ever happened since which I could lay against any of my professors at Madison. They have backed me cordially and enthusiastically whenever the occasion demanded. However, my reputation as a radical, still re-echoes through my career as a scientist; almost overshadows it. My chief professor, though he said I was the best man he had ever turned out, when I wanted a job, said also privately that he didn’t think I would ever make a scientist, I was interested in too many other things. Another Wisconsin professor, when asked about me, questioned whether I would ever “settle down to a scientific career,” though I had done absolutely nothing else for three years since I left there. A third expressed doubt, to me personally, that I would ever “accomplish anything.” My reputation has followed me through two jobs, so that when considered for the one I now hold, the question of my radical proclivities was again raised. All these things, and many others, are hard to get at objectively; but they sum up to a condition in which an activity incidental to three years study on a Ph.D thesis appears still to be of more weight in the eyes of the men who pride themselves on being unbiased and liberal-minded scientists, than anything scientific that I may have accomplished. Every one of them would unhesitatingly state that a man’s radical opinions were of no concern to them “if he did his work”; and no one of them would admit that any man would be “doing his work” if they knew he held these opinions. My own reaction is to pretend that I have lost interest in unconventional affairs, and to sedulously avoid any appearance of such interest in them in my professional capacity; in effect, I am one thing as a scientist, and another as a human being; I have dissociated most of my private concerns from my official ones; and the barrier between my school activities and any other intellectual interests is complete. I have two sets of ideas, two sets of friends, two modes of behavior, a regular double standard of morality, and I suppose I am only half a man in either capacity.
This is something of a tragedy to me personally, though that is not the interesting thing in general. The aspect of this that has struck me is, how perverted the whole unconscious thought of the academic institution is. As I have said, this is not evidence for a book. I might have trouble in demonstrating that my professors were not right about me. But one thing is certain; that I could have spent more than the amount of time and energy I spent on radical activities, on any of a number of more or less creditable things; on Wine, Women and Song, on student activities, golf, poker, or just plain idleness, and never have attracted any discreditable attention scientifically. Those things my professors and colleagues would disregard, provided I kept up a reasonable show of professional proficiency. There is only one realm of relaxation or dissipation which is recognized academically as a vicious incursion into scientific singlemindedness and assiduity; and that one is an intellectual interest in social unconventionality. That one distraction, and that alone, is recognized as an inherent and incontestible enemy of scientific right thinking. And the amusing part of it is that the scientists themselves fail to realize their own bias. For that is what it amounts to, even in the best of them; about one whole set of data, if they are not positively reactionary, then they not only have no positive opinions, but they impose upon themselves and others a negativity of opinion that amounts to a condition of positive prejudice.
CHAPTER LXXX
THE FOUNDATIONS OF FRAUD
I have taken you about from college to college and shown you the interlocking trustees, using the institution for the protection of their money-bags; also the successful sons, guarding the prestige and good name of their alma mater. To complete the picture I now draw your attention to the many organizations, national in their scope, which have been formed for the purpose of keeping our educational system in the capitalist fetters.
I begin with the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching, which was started seventeen years ago with a gift of ten million dollars. Its purpose was to provide pensions for superannuated college professors, and in his letter to the trustees Carnegie announced that “according to expert calculation” the revenue would be ample “to provide retiring pensions for the teachers of universities, college and technical schools in our country, Canada and Newfoundland.” This statement was speedily shown to be absurd; the total cost of the system for Columbia University alone would have been twice the income of the Foundation, and the cost for all the country would have been two hundred times the income of the Foundation. So very speedily the Foundation was compelled to limit the institutions included in its list, and it began laying down rules for colleges, and assuming control of higher education. It refused pensions to professors in the University of Illinois unless the university would alter the conduct of its medical school at Chicago. In like manner the governor of Ohio was informed that the universities of the state must be “reconstructed” on lines laid down by the Foundation. Becoming still more embarrassed for lack of funds, the Foundation discovered that it was bad for teachers “to have the risk of dependence lifted from them by free gifts,” and it proposed to have the professors begin paying for their own insurance.
Now, in the first place, a slight knowledge of economics will enable anyone to realize that a free gift of life insurance to professors at certain institutions would not permanently benefit the professors, because, under the stimulus of competition, this benefit would at once be taken into account in the salaries paid by the institution. So, what the Foundation amounts to is an endowment to certain privileged universities, with a highly autocratic control accompanying the gift. Under the plan as modified to compel the professor to pay for his insurance, the plan becomes a method of binding him to the institution and subjecting him to the administration. A part of the professor’s salary is held out, to be repaid to him later on as a reward for good behavior. Says Professor Cattell: “The professor who does not see eye to eye with Wall Street and Trinity Church may be compelled to sacrifice either his intellectual integrity or his wife and children. He is under heavy bonds to keep the peace; but it will be the peace of the desert.”
If you are interested in this shrewd device for the enslavement of college professors, you are referred to Professor Cattell’s book, “Carnegie Pensions,” published in 1919. The new insurance organization is headed by Elihu Root and Nicholas Murray Butler, a sufficient guarantee of its character. That the sheep have learned to recognize these wolves in shepherd’s clothing is shown by the fact that a questionnaire sent out by “School and Society” to a great number of college professors, asking for their opinions, brought a vote of thirteen in favor of the scheme and six hundred and thirty-six against it! The American Association of University Professors appointed a committee of twenty-four to study the scheme, and this committee submitted two elaborate reports condemning it.