"Academic Freedom."

The position of President Lowell, not that of President Butler, is taken in the report to the American Association of University Professors by its Committee of Three, on academic freedom in wartime. This was to be expected. The report would have profited by making itself a closer parallel to the pronouncement from Harvard, which is the best considered statement on the subject that has appeared. In contrast with it, the report to the University Professors has the effect of avoiding the most difficult kinds of cases and laying down platitudes for principles. In general, it takes the ground that doubts should be resolved in favor of the teacher, who, however, when he violates the letter or the spirit of the law, should be suspended or dismissed without waiting for the officers of the Government to act. The forceful parts of the report are those upholding the right and the advantage of public discussion of the objects of a war and the methods of conducting it, and pointing out the weakness of persecution as a "means for extirpating or repressing honest error, however grave and dangerous the error may be." The report condemns the dismissal of "a distinguished man of science," meaning Professor Cattell, as involving "a disregard of all the essential distinctions" upon which the report insists. --New York Evening Post