The above is from a man who has been teaching for twenty-nine years at the University of Chicago; and you may compare it with the pungent remark of Professor Cattell, who was a teacher for twenty-six years at Columbia: “The average university club in America could more easily dispense with its library than with its bar.”
CHAPTER LII
LITTLE HALLS FOR RADICALS
The touchiest problem with all academic authorities is that of “outside speakers.” They can handle their own professors; by care in selecting instructors, and weeding out the undesirables before they get prestige, they can keep dangerous ideas from creeping into the classrooms. But it always happens there are half a dozen students who come from Socialist homes, and these get together and call themselves some society with a college name, and start inviting labor agitators and literary self-advertisers, to disturb the dignity and calm of scholarship. This puts the university administration in a dilemma; they are damned if they do and damned if they don’t. If they refuse to let the radical propagandist in, there is a howl that they are repressing freedom of thought; on the other hand, if they do let him in, who can figure what millionaire may be led to alter his will?
There is always a little group of disturbers at every large university; and those at Chicago were moved to invite Upton Sinclair to come to their campus and repeat his Wisconsin performance. I was not present at the consultation between the president of the University of Chicago and his loyal and efficient secretary; but I have been able to imagine the scene. You understand, there isn’t a particle of prejudice against radicals, and we have absolute freedom of speech at our university, we are willing for the students to hear anyone they wish; but we decide that we had better minimize the trouble by confining this literary self-advertiser to a small hall, so that students will not announce the meeting, and the newspapers won’t hear about it, and the wealthy trustees and donors may not know that it has happened.
But the day before the lecture there is excitement in our president’s office—Upton Sinclair has arrived in Chicago, and has telephoned asking for an interview. He comes; and we discover that he has shaved off the bushy black Bolshevik whiskers in which we had every right to expect to find him; also he has left off his red necktie, and has adopted a gentle and seductive smile—you know how cunning these Bolsheviks are! Our president’s secretary tries to smooth him down—tells him what a great novelist he is, and how delighted we are to have him speak at our university, and how, of course, there is no particle of prejudice against radicals. Then he is taken into the dark Gothic chamber where our aged president sits by the dim light of arrow-proof windows.
Harry Pratt Judson has been at our university since it was founded thirty years ago, and is a holder of ten college degrees, and a high interlocking director in all the Rockefeller foundations for the guidance of American intellectual life. Also he is the author of a manual for college presidents entitled: “The Higher Education as a Training for Business,” a book which deserves to be required reading for every course in educational administration, a standard guide to the art of persuading the rich to put up their money for mullioned windows and crenellated battlements and moated draw-bridges. There has to be somebody to keep the interlocking directorate aware of the importance of culture, and Harry Pratt Judson is the boy for this job; showing how a college education really does pay in dollars and cents, and putting it in language so simple that the basest pork merchant over at the “yards” can get the point. Says our President Judson: “Men buy and sell, not merely for fun, but for profit.” And again: “A reputation for honest dealing with customers is a valuable asset.” And again: “The habit of sustained mental application is got only by persistently applying the mind to work in a systematic way.” Can any one deny these statements? If so, let him speak, or forever after hold his peace, while we, the administration of the University of Chicago, assert and declare that our Harry Pratt Judson is an educated educator and an inspired inspirationalist.
The Bolshevik author enters the presidential sanctum, still with that evil seductive smile. He explains that he has spoken to an audience of two thousand people at the University of Wisconsin, and fears that a hall seating only two hundred people will not accommodate those who wish to hear him at Chicago. He understands there is a large auditorium, Mandel Hall, which seats thirteen hundred——
“Ah, yes,” says our president, with that urbanity which distinguishes him, “but we are accustomed to reserve Mandel Hall for speakers who are invited by the university.”
“Well,” says the Bolshevik author—could anyone imagine the impudence?—“I should be perfectly willing to be invited by the university.”
“I’m afraid that could hardly be arranged,” says our president, as sweetly as ever. “Of course, Mr. Sinclair, you understand that we are quite willing for our students to listen to anyone’s ideas; we have absolute freedom of speech at this university, but we have our established traditions regarding the use of our halls, and you could not expect us to make an exception in your case.”