THE TRIUMPH OF DEATH
What is the intellectual state of the University of U. G. I. at the
present moment? I questioned four different professors about it—taking
the precaution to meet each one secretly, not letting even the others
know about it. Always I got the same report, frequently backed by the
same anecdotes. Some one had gone to the head of a department in the
Wharton School to say that the “Young Democracy” group of students
wanted to arrange a debate, to have one of their professors answer the
Socialist arguments of Scott Nearing. “I should like to do it,” replied
the department head. “It’s just what I believe in, but I am very busy,
and have plans to have my department expanded; I don’t believe in
pussy-footing, but there’s no use throwing away a chance to get some
good work done.” In other words, this man did not even dare to debate
_against_ Scott Nearing, for fear of offending his trustees! In the
Greek department a young instructor did not dare join the “Young
Democracy” group, though this was an open forum, strictly non-political;
he would give his money, he said, but not his name, it was too
dangerous. “They never interfere with my teaching Greek,” he added.
Keep hidden, that is the wise policy; keep your head down. Anything you
say may get into the newspapers, and get in wrong. A leader of the
striking longshoremen was arrested and clubbed, and a student tried to
raise bail. “Penn Man Defends Radical,” ran the scare headlines. And
some one told me a mournful story, one that I heard over and over again
in the colleges and universities I visited. You know in country
settlements they have the traditional “village idiot”; likewise in every
college and university they have some unhappy, beaten man, who made a
mistake once in his youth, and has never been able to atone for it. At
the University of U. G. I. there is a young professor, whose students
wished to debate the McNamara case; they asked him for advice on each
side of the debate, and he made suggestions, and tried to explain how
the use of violence would appear to a labor leader. For this he was
hauled up before the trustees and brow-beaten. He has never got beyond
the rank of assistant professor, and is a broken man. He was an active
party Socialist, but now does nothing, and if he writes a letter to a
newspaper on a public question, he dares not sign his own name to it.
The trustees may not pay much attention to the teaching of Greek, but
they watch the economics and history departments like hawks. A friend of
mine, not a professor, told of taking a motor ride with one of these
trustees, who referred to a Wharton School professor as “that pizen
pup.”
“What ideas of his do you object to?” asked my friend.
“Oh, all kinds of ideas; that Ireland should be free, for example. As
near as I can get it, he believes just what my cook believes.”
Said my friend: “You are mistaken about the man. He’s really a lovable
fellow; if you knew him you would like him. But, naturally, you don’t
meet him. You have an unwritten law—he would have to ask permission of
his dean or of the provost before he met you; otherwise he would commit
an unthinkable offense.”
“Well,” replied the trustee, “he’s unscientific, and anyhow, he doesn’t
get along with the boys.”
My friend said: “But that’s because his curriculum was changed so that
he can’t get any boys.”
“Well, anyhow,” said the trustee, “he’s not the calibre of man we want
for full professor.”
A woman friend of mine was present at a tea party where the head of a
department in the University of U. G. I. told about a proposed
appointment in the political science department. The man under
discussion was connected with the State Department in Washington. He was
wealthy, said this dean, and had a good social position; his wife’s
mother had especially important social connections. He was right on
Russia, he was right on Japan, he was right on reparations; he had
written the recent note of Secretary Hughes to the Bolshevist delegation
at Genoa, and Hughes had passed this note with only two or three
emendations. Such is the atmosphere in the high-up circles of our
plutocratic education; such are the standards of eminence! I am informed
on the best authority that this sturdy opponent of the Soviet government
in our State Department received three flattering offers from leading
Eastern universities, as soon as it became known that he was the author
of that Hughes note!
Such is the way the game is played. As one professor remarked to me:
“Knowing the ropes as I do, I could get any sort of promotion, any sort
of honors—and that not by worthy work, not by any true contribution to
science, but simply by knowing the interests, and being unscrupulous
enough. It is a situation which destroys the morals of every man who
knows about it.” And another said: “There is not a man in the Wharton
School today who truly respects himself.”
Such are the instructors; and the students are what you would expect.
One professor said to me: “Not five per cent of my men are thinking
about public questions. They take what I teach them as cows in the
pasture take rain, something to be endured but not thought about. They
come from high schools where they have heard no discussions of vital
questions. I have talked with thousands of them; ask anybody in the
university and you will get the same answer—their mental life is as dead
as the tomb.”
Another professor told how one of his colleagues had brought into his
class a former lecturer of the Y. M. C. A. in Siberia, who described to
the students the behavior of Semenoff, the Cossack bandit, one of the
pets of our State Department. The lecturer had traveled in Semenoff’s
train, and had been invited to tea, and Semenoff came in with his tunic
spotted with blood, explaining that he had just dispatched a carload of
prisoners. He had shot them, one by one, with his own revolver, and left
the dead for the American troops to bury. There had been some discussion
of the incident in the class, and not a man there thought there was
anything wrong about it. “They never batted an eye,” said my informant.
Such are the triumphs of plutocratic education; and lest you doubt this,
I mention that the students proved their convictions by action. They
kidnapped a Russian student, a quiet and unobtrusive fellow, a
Socialist, not a Communist; they carried him in an automobile some
fifteen miles outside the city, beat him until he was helpless, and left
him to get back as best he could. This was punishment for expressing the
opinion that the Russian people should be permitted to work out their
own destiny in their own way. For things such as this the state of
Pennsylvania contributes a subsidy of a million and a half dollars a
year!
The interlocking trustees are so sure of their power that they ventured
recently to give to all the world a demonstration of it. The old provost
retired, and they cast about for a new one, and offered to the American
academic world the gravest insult it has yet sustained. You might spend
much time searching through the names of prominent people in America,
before you found one less fitted to be head of a great university than
Leonard Wood; a second-rate regimental surgeon at the Presidio in San
Francisco, who had the fortune to become the favorite of Theodore
Roosevelt, and was by him rushed to a high command in the army, against
the unanimous protest of army men. In 1920 he was picked out by a group
of millionaire adventurers as their candidate for president; these men
were shown by the New York “World” to have spent millions to buy him the
nomination. They failed; and perhaps to soothe the general’s wounded
feelings the trustees of U. G. I. selected him for the highest honor in
their gift. Also, Harvard has just made him an overseer—the interlocking
process in a new form!
At the University of Pennsylvania the General receives twenty-five
thousand dollars per year. He has not yet condescended to honor the
university with his presence, but his duties are performed by an
assistant provost, at six or eight thousand. As faculty men explained to
me, the one thing which makes it possible to tolerate the indignities of
management by business men, is the fact that the president is always a
professional educator, a man who has been one of them and understands
their problems. But here is a man who has never been an educator, and is
not even a graduate of a university; a military autocrat, utterly out of
sympathy with true ideals of education. So the professor is pushed one
step lower in the social scale, his status of inferiority is fixed; and
at the University of U. G. I. everybody sits still and holds his breath,
waiting for the Grand Duke of Drexel-Morgan to die, and leave his
millions to his dead university!
P. S. As this goes to press, General Wood resigns.