Universities And The Public Trust: An Editorial

Over the last five years, the American people have been losing their confidence in American education, Where they were once fountains of pride, universities are now sources of suspicion, even to some of their own alumni. Where before, they were subject to only routine governmental surveillance, both public and private schools have become legislative punching bags; cursed at, investigated, and legislated against with monotonous frequency. Even the concept "academic freedom," formerly considered as vital to a university as football and ivy, is in bad repute. Like "peace" and "democracy," academic freedom has gone the way of terms discredited through use by the nation's enemies.

This sudden disillusionment is rooted in a popular conviction that universities have been and are now breeding grounds for Communism. This idea is not confined to the people who fear Communism more than they understand it. As well-versed an anti-Communist as J. B. Matthews has been able to write that "if all the colleges and universities in the United States had been closed for the last thirty-five years, our national situation would not have been any worse insofar as an intelligent approach to the problem of Communism is concerned."

The exasperating thing about this attitude is its persistence despite the undeniable contribution universities continue to make to the national welfare and security. Universities gave this country the atom bomb, radar, napalm, and cures for innumerable diseases. More top-secret research, more trained leadership for government and industry are following out of universities now than at any other time, and yet the public insists on drawing its impressions not from the river of loyalty but from the trickle of Communist affiliation.

No Room For Distinctions

This mass delusion does not, as some self-pitying eggheads would like to think, stem from a chronic public distaste for intellectuality. It is the outlet for frustrations born of war and preparation for war. It is the kind of scapegoat-flogging that almost inevitably results from seemingly endless international tension. In American education, the public has found reflections of Communism it can attack more safely and successfully than those in the distant and powerful Soviet state. It matters not that the very vulnerability of "red professors" is an indication of the irrelevance to the total scheme of Soviet conspiracy. A "red" is a "red," in the public mind, whether he is killing Americans in Korea or dodging Congressional questions in Washington. The desire for a scapegoat makes events of the thirties just as appalling as those of the fifties. It turns liberal into Communist, and past party members into present. It obliterates recollection of the public's own attitude toward Russia during the war years. For where there is hysteria, there can be no room for distinctions.

This change in attitude, then, is the cause of the mounting restrictions upon academic freedom that the CRIMSON has chronicled for the last five years. Every timid administrator, every repressive rule, every indignantly patriotic a legislator feeds upon this distrust, and doing so, increases it vehemence. This year's novelty, the Congressional investigations, are but one, albeit the most gaudy manifestation of the scapegoat temper. You can call the Veldes and Jenners whatever you like: ambitious intolerants, "junketeering gumshoes," or violator of the spirit of due process of law. But the volume of their fan mail testifies to the faithfulness with which they represent and satisfy public opinion.

That this attitude has results which thwart the free research and expression that is vital to education in a democracy is a point made too often to need support here. What must be remembered, though, is that even though a healthy attitude for controversy and research still exists at most universities, this does not mean that academic freedom has not already been limited. Freedom dies piecemeal, for every violation that comes to light, there are scores of actions that were self-repressed--meetings that were never held, research conclusion never expressed, political activity never taken up, humanitarian caused that failed because teachers were afraid a sign their names to anything. The political stagnation on American campuses is as much a testimony to the decay of academic freedom as any fired professor or loyalty oath.

Yet there are many good, honest Republicans who, even though they realize how the present hysteria distorts the real contributions of universities, hesitate to speak up against it. Nothing that the only men, books and ideas presently being purged are those they have opposed in social politics since the New Deal, they privately thank investigator for devastating their political opponents. Unfortunately, they underestimate the awful appetite of the scapegoat desire. They might look back at the French Revolution, when purger followed purged to the guillotine, or over to Massachusetts, where the "reds-in-education" issue is the stick Democrats use to beat Republicans. By blandly assuming the attack on academic freedom can stop before it reaches their own ideas, non-liberals show not only intolerance, but ignorance of the nature of the danger.

To correct the public attitude without sacrificing academic freedom will be no easy job for American education. It will require, on that part of every person involved in education--student, teacher, administrator, alumnus--the realization that they must fight for the privileges they could formerly take for granted. It will require the very ability to distinguish unorthodoxy from totalitarianism that the general public does not have.

No Intellectual Luxuries

Teachers and students will have to realize that entire academic communities are being judged by the things they do. They can no longer, if they wish education to regain popular respect, indulge in intellectual luxuries such as joining groups without asking of their real purpose. When called before investigating committees, they must realize the reputation of their college sits on the stand with them, and they should answer all questions but those which they know will lead to criminal or perjury charges. Although silence may save friends or express moral indignation, it unquestionably tacitly incriminates their entire university community in the eyes of the public. Reacting in this way to investigations, teachers then equally owe it to their institutions not to let their temporary unpopularity prevent them from honest pursuit of the truth and full use of their political rights as citizens.

But teachers and students cannot be expected to act this way wished they know that college officials, that group in education most prone to compromise academic freedom in the past, will stand behind them. Our universities have a responsibility to the public and themselves to expel teachers who have broken the law, or whose totalitarian beliefs so twist their teaching and research to render them unfit for their profession. But they have an equal responsibility to make sure the implication of unfitness that springs from use of the Fifth Amendment, membership in subversive groups, or any other indirect evidence is backed up by fact before any teacher is disciplined. In this way, mutual trust between universities and their faculties can be restored.

But defenses of education are hollow if they issue only from within university walls. In the long run, the only effective antidote to this distrust lies in elements of the public itself. Let respected citizens--trustees of universities and others whose loyalty is unquestioned--speak up in defense of universities. Let them cast their defense in the same terms of anti-Communism as the attacks have been. For the anti-Communist record of American universities is a long and proud one, needing of respected advocates and full publicity. If these tangible fruits of academic freedom become as much a part of the public consciousness as the case against it, the mutual trust between universities and the public can once more be restored.