All the time, you understand, the secret agents of the Better America Federation are watching the university. When they find the least trace of an unorthodox idea they report it, and the unorthodox person if he be a student, fails to pass his examination, or if he be an instructor he is let out upon any handy pretext. (All appointments in the university are for one year only; even the full professors have no tenure!). Take, for example, the case of three young instructors of English, whose conscience prompted them to sign a petition to the President for revision of the sentences of political prisoners. They were summoned before the acting heads of the university, and implored to withdraw their signatures. There was a bill before the legislature to increase the salaries of all professors, and loyalty to their colleagues should prompt them not to jeopardize this bill! One of them, Witter Bynner, the poet, asked if he might announce that the deans requested that he place the interests of the university above the interests of the country. Later, after Barrows had come in, it was intimated to these evil three that their contracts with the university would not be renewed. But this, of course, was not because of their unorthodox ideas; oh, no—they were not wanted because they had failed to qualify themselves for higher degrees by doing “research work!”
Just what is meant by “research work” in the University of California? It means the digging out of absurd details about far off and long dead writings, such as “the use of tu and vous in Molière.” This is the kind of thing you must do if you want to rise to prominence in a university of the interlocking directorate. With what desperate seriousness they take such work you may learn from a program submitted to the department of English by the dean of the summer session. This program quotes the president of Northwestern University as follows:
When you consider the value of your personal research, you will without any doubt regret that you have not paid more attention to this phase of your activities. You will discover that distinction in a professor is usually founded on successful research; that men for our faculty positions are selected largely on the basis of research ability; that the most essential credential is a research degree; that promotions within the faculty are based very largely on research accomplishments; that the only official record made by the university of the members of this faculty is the record of the publications of each member of the faculty; that the administration officers scan this list from year to year to see which men are engaged in production research; that research is looked upon with favor by every one of your associates.
So on through a long chant in praise of research, research, research. And the dean who quotes this adds:
All this is absolutely true of the University of California. We may deplore this emphasis upon research, but it is a fact, a fact which must be reckoned with in our plans for ourselves, for one another, and for the department.
What the poor dean means when he says “it is a fact,” is simply that it is the administration policy, and no one has the courage to oppose it. The authorities of the university know no vital thing for scholars to do, and are in terror of all genuine activities of the spirit; therefore they sentence men to spend their lives rooting in the garbage heaps of man’s past history, while their students go to hell with canned jazz and boot-leg whiskey and “petting parties.” Apparently some of the faculty are likewise not puritanical, for an undergraduate publication, “The Laughing Horse,” remarked last spring that “the professors of Latin and Greek would much rather see a leg-show than the ‘Medea’ of Euripides.”
There was one instructor at the university who made a real and successful effort to lift the thoughts of students above “leg-shows.” That was Witter Bynner, one of our distinguished poets, and incidentally a most lovable and delightful human being. He was invited to the university as a special lecturer on poetry, and made an extraordinary success. But, alas, he was one of the men who signed the petition for the political prisoners; also he wrote twelve lines of rather stunning poetry, which you may find as a frontispiece to the volume, “Debs and the Poets.” As Bynner says: “Certain eminent citizens demanded my dismissal and brought upon me attacks of every imaginable kind, personal, social and professional.” Bynner’s year at the university expired; and the authorities did not ask him to stay on. The students organized a class of their own, and begged him to meet them, outside the campus; also they issued a volume of verse in his honor. Come back to the University of California a hundred years from now and you will find that Witter Bynner has become an object of “research!”
CHAPTER XXXI
THE DRILL SERGEANT ON THE CAMPUS
These great military universities come to be run more and more on the lines of an army; everything rigid, precise and formal, all emergencies provided for, all policies fixed. The passion of the military mind for uniformity and regimentation is comically exhibited in an article published by President Barrows in the University of California “Chronicle,” April, 1922, entitled “What Are the Prospects of the University Professor?” It was read before the Board of Alumni Visitors, who must have been edified, to note how completely the professor’s life had been laid out for him by his thoughtful superiors. Colonel Barrows has a vision of the American college professor, taking in this country the place of the ruling classes of Britain, who govern “by reason of rank, breeding and traditional influence.” With the idea of attracting that kind of man, President Barrows submits a schedule of his life, showing how much he will receive every year, when he will marry and have a family, when he will travel, what degrees he will get. The president does not specify what he is to eat, but he will assuredly not eat much, with a wife and “one or more children” on a salary starting at a hundred and fifty dollars a month.
One detail in this article intrigued me, so I wrote President Barrows a letter, as follows: