The times-news. [volume] (Hendersonville, N.C.) 1927-current, 1937-01-11
NEWSPAPERS OPINIONS
A SCHOLAR AssAssINArED BY POLITICIANS

| DR.. Glenn Frank, president of the University of
Wisconsin, has been voted out of his job by the
board of regents-a scholar assassinated by cheap
vulgar malicious politics.
To be sure there were charges-ineficlency, bad
| management, unwise executiveshp or something
brother designed give decent face to this shame
less action.
But the leprosy of DR.. Frank was that he would
not bow and scrape and truckle to the LaFollettes
and the LaFollettes are the ring-masters OF WIS
consin. .,
1t appears to have been of matter to the po-
tically- inspired board of regents that DR.. Frank
is rated as owning one of the halfdozen greatest
intellectS in America mentality wide in It's
full reach and scope and so scntaillant in Its dis
section of national problems that he will very prob
ably become the next Republican candidate for the
presidency. From his youth upward, ne has been
marked by nature for some large niche in the ranks
of the nations leadership. b..
Nor did it make any difference to this same
board of regents or body of regicides, whichever
you may want to call them, that Dr. Frank took
the University of Wisconsin in its obscurity in 1925
and lifted it within these last IL years to front
place in the category of the greatest of American
institutions of its kind.
Neither of these two vital and primal factors was
sufficient to save this eminent scholar and univers-
ity president from the ambushngs of political
gangsters, acting upon the orders of the imperial
LaFollettes. .. ..s ar.
And the graver injustice of the incident is per-
haps not so much personal as institutional-dis-
tressing as that is.
Strangers to Dr. Frank WILL of course, feel sorry
that ne has thus been made victim of the wrath
of political hierarchy in his state. And the whole
educational society of America will ring out its bit
ter denuncations that of their great gods has
thus been vicousy dethroned.
But the instance involves far more than the per-
sonal sacrifice of DR.. Frank as he lies writing I'M
der the fires of wrath of the LaFollettes.
The wider implication has to do with the institu-
tiona life of education as expressed in university
leadership in America 3d..
What does this hideous display of the power of
personal politics in Wisconsin foreordain for the
future of American institutions of learning under
the government of the states? '.r
Is it to serve as precedent by which the wicked
whims and violent angers of other men who, for
day, may be lucky enough to have their wills
done and the tyrannies of their political power
unabridged in the administration and control Of
such great seats of education? ,....
If so it be, American education, as expressed in
university institutions is in for evil and fateful
day. r-,tar ~. -&".: processes.
Politics and scholarships are, out of the very
nature of their distinctive beings, unfriendly and
incompatible. Demagoguery and learning are poles
apart.
The one truckes to the vulgar vagaries of the
iterate mob; the other ministers to the emancipa-
ton and independence of the human mind, pro-
cess of social and intellectual development which
has no commerce with cheap and time-serving poll
tics.
When, therefore, American educational institu-
tons are laid in the lap of mere opportunistic DEM
agogues, and made the pawns and playthngs OF
the hands of puny politicians they are being slant
ed in the direction of utter ruin.-Charlotte OBJ
server.