Director of the Division of Public Affairs, School of Commerce,
Accounts and Finance, New York University
New York University has added a chapter to the history of “town and
gown” by opening a University Forum in lower New York. This has
been held throughout the winter in the Judson Memorial Building in
Washington Square, and its purpose has been to put the university
at the service of people in New York interested in a thoroughly
impartial discussion of questions of the day.
The purposes of the forum as announced last fall are to make the
university a greater force in training students to perform the duties
of citizenship, in helping citizens to understand the problems
of government, and in making thinking men act and active men
think. Public officials, business leaders, social workers, eminent
authorities were asked to present important questions of government
and industry and discuss vital problems of civic and commercial life.
The methods employed were somewhat different from those usually
followed in public discussions. In order that the academic atmosphere
of thoroughness, sincerity and impartiality might so far as possible
be conserved without sacrificing at the same time the interest
that comes from having questions presented by experts and from the
stimulus of controversy, it was decided that each question discussed
should cover three sessions. At the first session an able authority
has presented one side of the question. If there were time, as has
usually been the case in the hour and a half, the audience has
questioned the speaker in order to bring out more fully the points
made.
At the second session, a week later, the opposite side has been
presented with similar questioning.
At the third meeting the director of the forum has enumerated briefly
the most essential points made on both sides, giving his own judgment
regarding their validity and the relation of the question under
discussion to the public interest. In some instances where it has
seemed desirable, he has supplemented the arguments presented in
the discussion by points of his own in order to make the discussion
as complete as possible. In this summary an effort has been made to
present the questions as impartially as possible from the viewpoint
of the public interest.
In addition to this, representative citizens from the audience
have given in brief talks of not more than ten minutes each their
own views. Sometimes these voluntary speakers have been students,
sometimes citizens. So far as possible the names were learned in
advance in order that the discussion might proceed in the nature of
a debate with the two sides presented alternately. In these third
meetings especially, the interest has chiefly centered. In two or
three instances, notably perhaps in the consideration of woman’s
suffrage and the closed shop, the discussion was most animated, not
to say excited, but nevertheless the temper of university study and
the desire, however heated the feelings, to reach the truth and a
fair judgment was not lost.
The list of topics and speakers included: