EIGHT DELIVERERS

Harvard's Eight Old Men faced a forbidding task when they embarked on their investigation of appointment and tenure in May of 1937. Not only because of the tremendous size of the undertaking. But also because they were required to hand down a verdict on the hopes and fears of men with whom they no longer had anything in common. They, the judges, were famed professors, secure in position and reputation, and peculiarly exposed to conservatism. The young instructors before the bar were strugglers in a morass of uncertainty and ignorance about the future.

Nevertheless, the report which appeared yesterday is outstanding for its sympathetic sincerity. If any generalization can be made abut something so broad in scope, it must concern the genuine if temperate liberalism; and the honest desire to search out and alleviate the injustices under which younger instructors now labor. With one exception, it is able to harmonize with the recent Teachers' Union document.

The first and second parts of the report immediately sound the tonic note an clarion tones. The Committee has made a conscious effort to reduce the uncertainty, insecurity, and bewilderment which nag the shorten the period of probation before a permanent appointments. Such also is its formulation of definite and positive criteria for advancement. The young teacher will now know what to aim for, what to stress; and he need no longer cower so abjectly before the dread god Publication. Together these recommendations should effectively dull the Demolition sword suspended over the lower academic ranks.

There is a modulation in the third section. All very well are the procedural provisions proposed as far as they go. But the Committee suffers, nay endorses the autocracy which often dictates appointments at present. Younger men are to be consulted and will vote on their peers. But the motive force will still come from the chairman of the department-still imposed from above and not elected--and his older colleagues. It is perhaps unfortunate that the report say fit to disdain the recommendations of the Teachers' Union for more formal democracy within the departments.

The final section comes back to the original key with a triumphant and stirring motif. In its glorification of academic freedom, it is the liberal spirit epitomized. Extra-mural activities and opinions are not to be disregarded. They are to be given special weight--but far from being discriminated against, the radical and unorthodox viewpoint will be courted. For Harvard must have diversity of opinion within her ranks. Harvard must have her communist.

The bench of revered professors was forced to judge a trying case. But it performed its task well, and its decision should turn to a newer and somewhat brighter page for Harvard's young men. If its liberalism was at one point restrained, it must nevertheless be lauded for the comparatively happy mastery of a terrible ogre.