The Goose-step: A Study of American Education

by Upton Sinclair

In the fall of 1919 the inspirational President Burton delivered some of those wonderful high-sounding phrases, which are a part of our university swindle. He said that “integrity” must be the chief characteristic of university men and women. Whereupon a college paper, “The Foolscap,” was moved to a little plain speaking. It said:

Academic freedom, to be sure, exists here at Minnesota as at other equally “ideal” universities. Our president has publicly announced that fact. Our faculty and the student body enthusiastically applauded that announcement. This academic freedom, however, is of so peculiar a nature that no one member of the faculty is free publicly to discuss it. The president may speak of it with an engaging boldness; the students may speak of it (and do) with a fine ironic scorn; but members of the faculty, those to whom is intrusted our instruction in “all forms of knowledge,” those even whom we address as “Professor” and “Dean,” they dare not utter their true opinion concerning it; their mouths are effectually sealed. This the students know. They have seen the flush of shame and anger rise to the cheeks of embarrassed teachers who could reply to audacious undergraduate taunts of insincerity and dishonesty only with mortified silence. They have seen, at that moment when vigorous applause gave generous approval to our president’s insistence on academic freedom, at that very moment when enthusiasm for truth was at its highest, at that very moment they saw instructors wink at their colleagues, and deans look meaningly at some understanding friend. Students, both inside and outside the class room, are particularly observant of the actions of their instructors. They know when deans applaud because they have to; when professors say things they do not mean. They know that even while they listen to talk of academic freedom they see men annually relieved of their academic burdens for having dared to utter what they deemed to be the truth. These students know the colleges from which such instructors were dismissed. They know the names of these instructors. They know the cause for which they were dismissed. They know, also, that such is the state of academic freedom at our university that, even as we go to press, at least one professor in the academic college—a professor, too, whose discreet devotion to facts, and whose cautious refusal to permit the slightest classroom interpretation thereof, make his potentially excellent subject an inexpressible bore—that at least this one professor is trembling with fear and anger because of official intimation that he had entertained opinions for which his institution did not stand.

This publication made a tremendous uproar in the university. For, of course, all university influence depends upon the keeping up of a pretense of freedom; the public must believe in these mighty captains of erudition and must not see them wink as they use their high-sounding words. A faculty committee of five members was appointed to investigate the statements made. This committee interviewed a great number of university people, members of the faculty of all ranks, both men and women, also students and alumni. They submitted a report, of which I quote parts. You note the carefully guarded phrases:

A great deal of evidence has been presented to your committee which indicates the existence in our academic community of a sense of restraint and repression of a kind and degree distinctly unfavorable to a sound and intellectual life. This is already indicated by the vote taken at the meeting of the faculty on February 16. The investigation of the committee has served to confirm and verify this impression of a condition that cannot be described as wholesome. Fears have been disclosed to the committee, which if recounted in detail might seem to many members of the faculty absurd and unbelievable, and which perhaps could not be entertained by others, either because of the possession of greater courage, or of a greater security of tenure, or because of the fact that their own convictions are in happier conformity with the ruling opinion. Nevertheless, the undoubted presence of these fears in the minds of many members of the faculty constitutes a psychological atmosphere depressing in its influence, and calculated to have a deleterious effect upon the sincerity and quality of the teaching done under a sense of it....

It has become of late a frequent experience that complaint on the part of some person or organization outside the university leads to an investigation, formal or informal, of the views or activities of some member of the faculty. Commonly, it may be taken for granted that the activities complained of are wholly within the discretion of a teacher and the rights of a citizen. The mere knowledge, however, that such complaints are under investigation, creates a sense of intimidation, felt most strongly, of course, by the more inexperienced members of the faculty whose academic tenure is less secure....

Much of the fear prevalent on the campus is due to reports of the manner in which investigations have been conducted by the regents, the attitude exhibited not always having been sufficiently clear and consistent to be wholly reassuring. Doubtless such impressions are sometimes due to mere inadvertencies; but the fact is that a member of the faculty, when summoned to answer charges preferred, frequently finds himself unjustifiably on the defensive....

Evidence has been brought to the attention of your committee which plainly indicates the use of espionage by external forces that continually attempt to exert pressure upon the authorities as to university teaching and personnel. Your committee is firmly of the opinion that such pressure is not in the public interest. The invasion by private detectives of the domain of academic life and thought is scarcely compatible with the maintenance of a sound and wholesome intellectual spirit. The methods and point of view of these people may be illustrated by your committee’s own experience. Early in the course of this investigation, one of these agents sought and obtained an interview with a member of your committee, in which he volunteered the information that the “Foolscap” editorial (which, as it subsequently developed, he had not even read) was a piece of political propaganda, that he knew the particular party headquarters whence it came, and that it was certain he could discover the real author concealed behind the editorial screen. He offered, accordingly, on the assumption that your committee was interested, not in the question of fact raised by the editorial, but rather in the exposure and punishment of a quasi-criminal conspiracy supposedly involved in its publication, to worm himself into the confidence of the editor of the “Foolscap” and to procure for your committee by betrayal of this confidence the name of the guilty propagandist author. It is deplorable to note the constantly extending nets of private spy systems in civil life, and it is to be hoped that the threatened invasion of academic life by this sinister influence may be prevented. No thoughtful person can fail to see how blighting would be its influence, when once firmly established, in the destruction of mutual confidence, and in rendering impossible that frankness of discussion and opinion without which the intellectual life is not freely nourished and stimulated.

There remains only to state what action the faculty took in this matter. One member of the committee tells me about it:

They postponed action until such a time as the committee was ready to report again to a closed faculty meeting giving specific instances of lack of academic freedom, with names and dates. The committee, having decided to present three typical cases in detail to the faculty, asked the president to summon a meeting. He passed the buck to the committee of the deans known as the senate. The deans thought it inopportune to call the meeting at that particular time, it being just prior to the June examinations. Summer vacation ensued. In September, when college re-opened, one of the five committeemen had gone East for a year as an exchange professor; another had been retired as a Carnegie pensioner on account of his age; a third, though still drawing a salary as a member of the faculty, had received notice of his dismissal; and the other two saw the futility of trying to bring the matter up again.

Also I ought to add what action the regents took. They kicked out of the university the young instructor who had been most active in preparing the report. He has written me about the circumstances of his dismissal: