Evening star. [volume] (Washington, D.C.) 1854-1972, 1953-03-04
Academic Good Sense

AS suggested by The Stars editorial
on Academic Good Sense" February
%, it may be advisable for schools and
colleges to do their own house cleaning"
as to teachers who might not Cooper
ate with congressional investigators Of
communism in education. But what
about the cleansing of texts written by
the professors who do the teaching?
If socialism is being promoted in
college courses, that will inevitably pro-
duce teachers opposed to capitalism.
Such state of mind is subversive of
law and order and the protection of
private property. Life, liberty, and the
pursuit of happiness are things for the
State, not to provide "liberally," but to
protect once private, competitive enter
prise has attained them.
The preachments of socialism, that
high standards of living are human
right" that will be universally avail
able when natural resources are taken
over by the State and exploited without
profit" and for the benefit of all the
people," as capitalism never does, are
widespread in our schools and colleges
and often in our churches.
II only such a materialistic utopia
could be established by law-but it
can't. Political attempts at redistribu-
ton spell, not greater, but lesser general
welfare. This being the truth, it be-
hooveS Congress, which lays taxes and
exemptS educational funds from taxa
ton, and then appropriates hundreds
OF millions in SubventionS for science
and education, to see to it that ideas
cI1hUorcyo nf no
supported in education thus subsidized
President Lewis Webster Jones of
Rutgers University, whom your editorial
commendS for his stand against the
faculty in support of the trustees who
have discharged two professors, is not
insensitive to this limitation on "aca-
demic freedom" What he says is
requisite to maintaining such freedom
is worth noting-and criticizing. Let
me quote:
"A university almost inevitably is out
of step with the wider community.
Since one of its essential functions is
to be critic of conventional beliefs
1t must come into conflict with uncriti-
cally adopted mores and opinions. This
essential conflict is the perennial source
OF attacks on the universities. (They)
have only one truly valid defense
against such attacks, namely, that they
can demonstrate, on demand, that their
educational methods and their theo-
retlcal findings have been arrived at
by trained personnel through the use
OF thoroughly rational procedures.
This demonstration of nationality :.
Is the one firm foundation on which
academic freedom rests
1t follows that if educational pro-
cedureS are not in fact always thorough
and rational. then the perennial
source of attacks on the universities"
by 1.-THE wider community may have
some justification into which Congress
may wisely probe as the basis for
regulatory controls with which the
educators must reasonably agree. Is
socialism grounded on firm founda-
ton" of "demonStrable rationality?" Is
it being so presented to students in our
schools and colleges?
The plain answer is that socialism is
not reasonable but is nevertheless being
so presented in higher" education; wit
ness the careful Recommendation in Rep
resentative Skaters speech to the 82d
Congress. and in "a Critique of Text
books" by DR.. Hobbs of the University
of Pennsylvania.
Also. in the current American Scien-
fist, the case presented by DR.. Martin
of McGill University in Canada against
J. B. s. Haldane's attempt to harmonic
altruism and natural selection is a
sweeping indictment of the conventional
beliefs of science as demonstrably
irrational yet supported by lack of
freedom of ideas in the trained per-
sonnet" which does not practice what it
breaches but is intolerant of criticism.
Alden Potter.