THE ACADEMIC RABBITS
There are, of course, a large number of individual professors in
institutions of higher learning who take their stand for what they
believe to be the truth, and risk their jobs and chances of promotion. I
have mentioned the existence of eight “renommir professoren.” At
Wellesley is Vida Scudder, who “gets by” because she is a devout
Episcopalian; also Professor Ellen Hayes, who “gets by” because she is
old, and because she teaches astronomy. These reasons are not my
guesses, but were the statements of the president of the college, when
she was asked at a women’s club in Denver why she kept a notorious
Socialist and labor agitator on her faculty.
Professor Hayes got this reputation by running for office on the
Socialist party ticket; I visited her on my trip, and heard some funny
stories. Here is one of the sweetest and most lovable old ladies you
ever met, who is not mealy-mouthed about her belief in the right and
destiny of the workers to control the world’s industry for their own
benefit. She deliberately lives in a working-class neighborhood—with
rather comical results. Her neighbors are in awe of her, because she is
a college professor, and a little afraid of her, because of her bad
reputation; the one way she might get to know them, through the church,
is not available, because Professor Hayes is a scientist.
On the other side of the continent is Guido Marx of Stanford, who
shamelessly avows his sympathy with the co-operative movement, and
likewise with faculty control of universities. Professor Marx, it is
amusing to notice, teaches mechanical engineering, a subject almost as
safe as the stars. If there is a single professor in the United States
who teaches political economy and admits himself a Socialist, that
professor is a needle which I have been unable to find in our academic
hay-stack.
Of course there are many radicals who conceal their views, and
judiciously try to open the minds of their students without putting any
label upon themselves. I have told in “The Profits of Religion” about
Jowett at Oxford, who got by with the Apostles’ Creed whenever he had to
recite it in public, by inserting the words “used to” between the words
“I believe,” saying the inserted words under his breath, thus: “I _used
to_ believe in the Father, the Son, and the Holy Ghost.” I encountered
several college professors who have equally ingenious devices for
salving their consciences in their unhappy situation. I might terrify
the plutocratic world by stating that I know two presidents of small
colleges in the United States, who in their own homes and among their
trusted friends are real “reds.” One of them, a young man recently
appointed, was asked by his assembled trustees: “What are your views on
property questions?” He answered, with an easy smile: “I fear I am far
too conservative for a man of thirty-seven”—and he got by with that! The
other one is head of a woman’s college, and was asked by her trustees:
“Are you a Socialist?” She said to me: “I could answer no with a
perfectly good conscience, for I had just made up my mind that I am a
convert to the Soviet form of political and industrial organization!”
Of course, it is perfectly possible to teach modern ideas without the
labels, and to open the minds of your students by seeing that they hear
both sides of every case. If you avoid the extremely crucial questions,
such as the I. W. W. and Russia, you can get by with this in the
majority of institutions, especially if you eschew outside activities
and never get into the newspapers. Many professors are doing this,
others have tried and slipped up, and have sacrificed promotion and
security. Many professors are rovers in the academic world, staying in
one place for two or three years, and when they are not able to stand it
any more, moving on. There is an infinite variety of degrees and
shadings in such cases; conditions differ with institutions, and with
subjects taught, and with individual teachers. Some “get away” with what
others dare not attempt. Some spoil their chances by bad manners or bad
judgment; and, of course, many others are accused of doing this. You
will seldom find a fight over a question of academic freedom where there
are not other factors present or alleged, personal weaknesses or
eccentricities. It is always easy to find defects in the characters and
temperaments of persons whose ideas are offensive to us.
Likewise, of course, it is easy to find excuses for seeking the safest
way, and holding on to our jobs. The psychoanalysts have a useful word
for mental processes of this sort—they are “rationalizations”; and the
masters of our educational system have provided an elaborate set of
“rationalizations” for college professors who wish to avoid the painful
duty of being heroes. They will be loyal to the institution and to their
colleagues. They will be scholars and not propagandists. They will be
judicious, instead of being “emotionally unbalanced, like Scott
Nearing.” They will argue that their specialty is one of unusual
importance, and they are privileged beings, set apart to work at that.
Or they will plead that social evolution takes a long time, and that
every man’s first duty is to look out for his wife and children. These,
too, are phrases which I heard over and over again, and they reveal the
psychology of the academic rabbits. You will perhaps be interested to
meet one of these rabbits, so here is part of a letter written by a
professor in a large college in New York City:
I do not believe that there is a single group of “special privilege.”
The human race is made up of people who are looking after their own
interests first—some with energy and ability, some with weakness and
folly, but not with less singleness of purpose. All such groups, in so
far as they have ability enough, want to control education and all
other group activities in their interest. This is perfectly
natural.... Of course the big book corporations work for the promotion
of their friends just as you and I do. If they put bad people into the
schools and colleges it is the fault of the employing agencies.
Before I conclude this chapter I ought to mention one hopeful incident
which happened at Lafayette College, a religious institution located at
Easton, Pennsylvania. The president of this institution, MacCracken, is
a product of the University of Jabbergrab; he was professor of politics
there for twelve years, and has five honorary degrees. He has as the
grand duke of his trustees the president of the Hazleton National Bank
and the Hazleton Iron Works; and as first assistant he has Mr. Fred
Morgan Kirby, president of the Woolworth stores, also of a bank and a
railroad; a high-up interlocking director in railroads, lumber,
insurance, gas and electricity. Mr. Kirby decided that he did not like
modern ideas, so he gave a hundred thousand dollars to Lafayette, to
furnish a salary of seven thousand a year for the teaching of “civil
rights”; very carefully laying down his definition—“those absolute
rights of persons, such as ... the right to acquire and enjoy property
as regulated and protected by law.” Also he declared his purpose:
That the fallacies of Socialism and kindred theories and practises
which tend to hamper and discourage and throttle individual effort,
and individual energy, may be exposed and avoided ... with a firm
belief that the protection of the civil rights of individuals has
contributed greatly to the advancement of the nation and that the
encroachments, and threatened encroachments on these rights will
imperil the country, and destroy the prosperity and happiness of our
people, I, Fred Morgan Kirby, give to Lafayette College, etc.
These are high-sounding legal phrases, and we shall understand the
situation better if we put them into plain business English, as follows:
I, Fred Morgan Kirby, having become owner of a chain of hundreds of
stores throughout the United States, and wishing to have my
descendants own these stores forever, seek to provide that the
wage-slaves who work in these stores shall never organize, but shall
come to be hired as individuals under the competitive-wage system. To
this end I wish to hire a man to teach in a college that any
proposition to have the Woolworth stores owned by the public, or
democratically run by the people who work in the stores, will imperil
the country and destroy the prosperity and happiness of America.
Mr. Kirby thought that seven thousand a year ought to buy a real high-up
professor of political science, and his college president invited a
young professor of a leading university, who asks me to omit his name in
telling the story. This professor boldly asked for an opportunity to
discuss the question with Mr. Kirby himself, so they sat down to
luncheon, the grand duke and his university president and this young
supposed-to-be rabbit. The supposed-to-be rabbit suggested that it might
not be quite fair to lay down to a man of science exactly what he should
teach forever after; which surprised Mr. Kirby, and rather hurt his
feelings. He said that when he hired a salesman, he told him what to say
and how to say it. Mr. Kirby is a nice, amiable old business gentleman,
and he asked, plaintively: “Why can’t I employ a college professor to
sell my opinions?” The professor, who is a lawyer, said that he should
be very glad to become Mr. Kirby’s attorney if invited. He would give up
teaching work and advocate Mr. Kirby’s ideas—only the fee which Mr.
Kirby offered was insufficient for a lawyer, and he would regard that
merely as a retaining fee. Then the professor turned to President
MacCracken, asking him if he did not think that possibly the terms of
the bequest might have a tendency to control the opinions of the
professor who accepted the chair. President MacCracken answered naively
that he had never thought of that. Such a dear, innocent college
president—he had given an honorary degree to A. Mitchell Palmer only a
year before this!
The deal with this professor did not go through, and—here is the
significant part of the story—President MacCracken asked one university
after another to recommend a man for that chair, and not one would do
it; not one economist of standing could be found who would accept seven
thousand dollars a year to become the salesman of Mr. Kirby’s ideas! In
the end they had to take an obscure lawyer from Washington, whom no one
had ever heard of before, or has ever heard of since. That is
encouraging—except for the poor students at Lafayette, who are
innocently swallowing Mr. Kirby’s poison!