Some of the professors who seceded from Columbia University, including James Harvey Robinson, Charles A. Beard and Thorstein Veblen, organized a free institution known as the New School for Social Research; it was to cater to students who really wished to study, and to dispense with all the flummeries, including examinations and degrees. The enterprise has not proved a financial success, for a peculiar reason. The capitalist system does not permit people to study for the luxury of possessing knowledge; the purpose of study is to earn a living, and to that end you have to have a certificate that you have studied. In other words, you must go to an institution which fits as a cog in the educational machine. The New School for Social Research has on its teaching staff half a dozen of the best minds in America, and its purpose is really to teach people to think; therefore I give it a free “boost,” and advise you that its address is 465 West 23rd Street, New York.
There was another free college in America; it didn’t last long, but I mention it because it was a gallant effort, and offers a model for the future. It was known as Wire City College, and had a beautiful location in a big house high up on the banks of the Missouri River at Leavenworth, Kansas. Its professors, and likewise its students, were military prisoners of the United States government, and they proceeded to organize themselves, forming a really free college, governed by its students and faculty. All the teachers were elected by the students, and ran the class until they were deposed; all the papers were voluntary, there were no examinations, and—most vital this difference from other colleges—all the students studied.
There was a secret library of three hundred radical books, in addition to the prison library of seven thousand respectable books. The library reading room was the lavatory. There were lectures every evening from seven to eight; on Monday English was taught by H. Austin Simons, a former reporter for the Hearst newspapers; on Tuesday logic was taught by Carl Haessler, now managing editor of the Federated Press; on Wednesday economics was taught by Carlton Rodolf, secretary of the Marx Institute of New York. (His students decided that he was too technical, so they fired him.) There was also Clark Getts, later connected with the Federated Press. On Thursday biology was taught by George Schmieder, former high school teacher and graduate of the University of Pennsylvania; on Friday philosophy was taught by Haessler; and on Saturday there were discussions.
The college published a paper, the “Wire City Weekly,” also a bulletin, clandestinely made on prison typewriters; the time-schedules were printed by a conscientious objector in the prison printery. The institution was conducted for several months, until finally the authorities found out about it, and almost the entire faculty was kidnapped and carried off to Alcatraz Island, and almost the entire student body to Fort Douglas, Utah. So far as I know, this is the only college in America which has thus been dealt with; but no doubt the interlocking directorate has made note of the plan, and if free colleges should continue to spring up, we shall get used to the wholesale disappearance of college faculties and students.
CHAPTER LXXXV
THE ACADEMIC RABBITS
There are, of course, a large number of individual professors in institutions of higher learning who take their stand for what they believe to be the truth, and risk their jobs and chances of promotion. I have mentioned the existence of eight “renommir professoren.” At Wellesley is Vida Scudder, who “gets by” because she is a devout Episcopalian; also Professor Ellen Hayes, who “gets by” because she is old, and because she teaches astronomy. These reasons are not my guesses, but were the statements of the president of the college, when she was asked at a women’s club in Denver why she kept a notorious Socialist and labor agitator on her faculty.
Professor Hayes got this reputation by running for office on the Socialist party ticket; I visited her on my trip, and heard some funny stories. Here is one of the sweetest and most lovable old ladies you ever met, who is not mealy-mouthed about her belief in the right and destiny of the workers to control the world’s industry for their own benefit. She deliberately lives in a working-class neighborhood—with rather comical results. Her neighbors are in awe of her, because she is a college professor, and a little afraid of her, because of her bad reputation; the one way she might get to know them, through the church, is not available, because Professor Hayes is a scientist.
On the other side of the continent is Guido Marx of Stanford, who shamelessly avows his sympathy with the co-operative movement, and likewise with faculty control of universities. Professor Marx, it is amusing to notice, teaches mechanical engineering, a subject almost as safe as the stars. If there is a single professor in the United States who teaches political economy and admits himself a Socialist, that professor is a needle which I have been unable to find in our academic hay-stack.
Of course there are many radicals who conceal their views, and judiciously try to open the minds of their students without putting any label upon themselves. I have told in “The Profits of Religion” about Jowett at Oxford, who got by with the Apostles’ Creed whenever he had to recite it in public, by inserting the words “used to” between the words “I believe,” saying the inserted words under his breath, thus: “I used to believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” I encountered several college professors who have equally ingenious devices for salving their consciences in their unhappy situation. I might terrify the plutocratic world by stating that I know two presidents of small colleges in the United States, who in their own homes and among their trusted friends are real “reds.” One of them, a young man recently appointed, was asked by his assembled trustees: “What are your views on property questions?” He answered, with an easy smile: “I fear I am far too conservative for a man of thirty-seven”—and he got by with that! The other one is head of a woman’s college, and was asked by her trustees: “Are you a Socialist?” She said to me: “I could answer no with a perfectly good conscience, for I had just made up my mind that I am a convert to the Soviet form of political and industrial organization!”
Of course, it is perfectly possible to teach modern ideas without the labels, and to open the minds of your students by seeing that they hear both sides of every case. If you avoid the extremely crucial questions, such as the I. W. W. and Russia, you can get by with this in the majority of institutions, especially if you eschew outside activities and never get into the newspapers. Many professors are doing this, others have tried and slipped up, and have sacrificed promotion and security. Many professors are rovers in the academic world, staying in one place for two or three years, and when they are not able to stand it any more, moving on. There is an infinite variety of degrees and shadings in such cases; conditions differ with institutions, and with subjects taught, and with individual teachers. Some “get away” with what others dare not attempt. Some spoil their chances by bad manners or bad judgment; and, of course, many others are accused of doing this. You will seldom find a fight over a question of academic freedom where there are not other factors present or alleged, personal weaknesses or eccentricities. It is always easy to find defects in the characters and temperaments of persons whose ideas are offensive to us.