Academic Freedom
I
FREEDOM of teaching, as scholars understand the term, means control of university instruction by the teaching profession itself, untrammeled by outside interference. The university teacher is a prophet of the truth. His tenure of office should not be determined by political, theological, or popular approval; but he should be held accountable to his own calling.
In point of fact, the teacher to-day is not a free, responsible agent. His career is practically under the control of laymen. Fully three quarters of our scholars occupy academic positions; and in America, at least, the teaching investigator, whatever professional standing he may have attained, is subject to the direction of some body of men outside his own craft. As investigator he may be quite untrammeled, but as teacher, it has been said, he is half tyrant and half slave.
The professional status of the scholar differs notably in this respect from that of the other learned professions. The physician is governed by a code prescribed by his own medical association. The lawyer is responsible for his professional conduct to a bar association composed of fellow practitioners. In most denominations the clergy are amenable solely to ecclesiastical courts or church dignitaries. In contrast with these self-organized professions, the scholar is dependent for opportunity to practice his calling, as well as for material advancement, on a governing board which is generally controlled by clergymen, financiers, or representatives of the state.
The reason for this difference is not hard to discover. Unlike other professional men, the scholar cannot ply his vocation alone. Aristotle is the only instance of a college of arts and sciences successfully combined in one person; the tremendous progress of learning since his day has made it impossible for even a giant intellect to repeat the attempt. Furthermore, the foundation of an institution of learning on any adequate scale requires more capital than scholars as a class can provide. They are compelled to rely on the resources of others. The initiative in establishing institutions of learning is usually taken by the Church, the State, or the wealthy class. Many of the early European universities were outgrowths of older ecclesiastical schools. The universities of Paris and Oxford originated in this way. Those at Naples and Vienna were established by government and maintained from state funds. Heidelberg obtained charters from both Church and State. Even in mediæval times certain colleges and chairs derived their endowment from the private fortunes of princes. Several early foundations at Oxford and Cambridge belong to this class.
A similar development took place in our own country. Some of our colleges were founded by religious bodies — Wesleyan and the Catholic University of America, for instance. Others, such as Stanford, Chicago, and Clark, were wholly endowed through private donation. Our state universities and city colleges are maintained by state and municipal appropriations, and the former receive large sums annually from the national government besides.
The power of appointment to the teaching staff generally remains with the founders, or is vested in a self-perpetuating board. In a few instances control has passed to the graduates, acting through their chosen representatives, as at Harvard, or is shared by them, as at Yale and Princeton. It has never been delegated to the teaching staff. Yet the faculty forms the very core of the university.
President Schurman of Cornell brings out the anomaly most strikingly in a recent report to the trustees of that institution. He says: ‘The university is an intellectual organization, composed essentially of devotees of knowledge — some investigating, some communicating, some acquiring — but all dedicated to the intellectual life. . . . The faculty is essentially the university; yet in the governing boards of American universities the faculty is without representation.’
The educational policy and curriculum are entrusted more largely to the care of the teaching body, but the trustees or regents insist upon their legal right as court of last appeal. Even at our least provincial universities an academic programme adopted by the faculty has occasionally been vetoed by the corporation; this occurred at Harvard when the three-year undergraduate course was first planned. On the other hand, new methods of instruction have sometimes been put into operation by the board without ever being submitted to the teaching staff. The Princeton preceptorial system is an instance of this.
Moreover, it is generally conceded by both faculty and corporation that the president or chancellor is responsible for the formulation and administration of the academic policy. But, unlike a constitutional prime minister, he is chosen by the governing board and is not directly responsible to his colleagues in the faculty. He generally selects the deans, the heads of departments, and often the faculty committees. The entire academic machinery is virtually under his control, and the teaching body is expected to carry out his theory of education.
Despite these obvious incongruities the plan has worked well. College instruction in America has kept, nearly abreast with the progress of learning. At most institutions the curriculum has been steadily advancing. If the evolution has been slow in some branches, we have not made haste to adopt startling innovations. From the standpoint of instruction the American system of university government makes for conservatism and stability, which are important qualities in the undergraduate curriculum — more fundamental, perhaps, than flexibility and progress. It is only from the standpoint of scholarship that our theory of control is open to serious criticism.
II
The principle of academic constraint has worked injury to the scholastic profession. The absence of true professional responsibility, coupled with traditional accountability to a group of men devoid of technical training, narrows the outlook of the average college professor and dwarfs his ideals. Any serious departure from existing educational practice, such as the reconstruction of a course or the adoption of a new study, must be justified to a group of laymen and their executive agent. The board which engages the services of a scholar is apt to regard him in the light of a hired workman, rather than a trained expert specially qualified to offer advice concerning his own branch. Brought up to regard the corporation as the source from which all favors flow, it is not strange that some scholars lay undue stress on the economic side of their position. A colleague of mine, whose learning and intellectual honesty cannot be questioned, tells me that he performs this or that university duty because he is paid to do it. It might well be pointed out that the physician fulfills his professional obligations whether he is paid or not.
As a rule the scholar is quite as faithful, quite as altruistic, as the physician. But at the same time he is well aware that material success lies in securing the favor of the governing board: that he endangers his career if the mode or content of his instruction incurs their disapproval. Wilfully in some cases, oftener for lack of incentive, the average scholar fails to put forth his best efforts when professional zeal would carry him beyond the established programme.
The German scholar has higher ideals. In German universities academic freedom of teaching (akademische Lehrfreiheit) has long been a cardinal tenet. The professor of highest rank (the Ordinarius) is free to offer any course whatsoever within the confines of his own branch. This untrammeled freedom of teaching has led to a somewhat mistaken conception in our own country of the real meaning of academic freedom. It is often imagined that it implies liberty on the part of a professor to advance any theory in classroom without restraint. Some scholars may accept this radical interpretation. But it is doubtful whether any considerable number would practice it even if present limitations were removed.
The American conception of university education, especially our theory of undergraduate instruction, differs widely from the German. The American college seeks to weld its curriculum into an organic unity, and this necessitates a definite apportionment of courses among the staff. Freedom of teaching does not mean that an instructor may offer any course which he deems wise without securing the consent of his colleagues. It means rather the absence of constraint by non-academic forces.
The need of obtaining the consent of the faculty will serve as a check on individual eccentricities. Due regard for the opinion of the scientific world will prevent most scholars from hazarding sensational theories unless the evidence appears thoroughly convincing. No sensible man is content to incur the condemnation of his contemporaries unless he feels assured of a favorable verdict by posterity. A bizarre theory will be advanced only by a madman, a fool, or a genius. The real task is to distinguish between these three classes. The tests of mental disorder are now sufficiently reliable to separate the victim of delusion from the man of strange ideas. The psychiatrist can be trusted to pick out the mentally unbalanced.
But who is to judge whether the fantastic theories advanced by a man of genius are ridiculous heresies or pertinacious facts? Are the politician, the clergyman, and the philanthropist better fitted to decide than the scholar? Is a group of laymen better qualified to formulate a philosophical programme than a group of philosophers? Shall we deem the same body of amateurs more expert in economic theory than the combined wisdom of economists? In determining the professional standing of a scholar and the soundness of his teachings, surely the profession itself should be the court of last appeal. The scholar is by profession a searcher after truth. It is highly improbable that the entire body of specialists will be hopelessly misled by false doctrine, and biased by unsound judgment. The lay mind, on the contrary, when it is called to pass upon the value of new hypotheses is more than likely to condemn true and false alike.
A trustee at one of our leading universities, I am told, recently expressed a fear lest psychologists might venture to attack certain innate and fundamental truths, such as moral judgment and rational intuition. Few of my colleagues would be foolish enough to enter into a contest with the eternal verities. At the same time no scholar can have much reverence for ‘eternal verities ’ which are incapable of standing some pretty hard knocks. The real test of an eternal truth is its ability to withstand assault and siege.
III
One of the most notable conflicts between a scholar’s expert judgment and the opinion of the laity occurred three centuries ago. About 1610, Galileo, a professor at the University of Padua, began publicly to teach the heliocentric theory of the universe, advanced nearly seventy years before by Copernicus as a tentative hypothesis. For teaching this view, Galileo was severely censured; he was compelled to retract the theory and enjoined from promulgating it. Now if the untrained public ever had an indisputable right to interfere with academic teaching, it was in this very case. If ever a theory advanced by eminent scholars deserved condemnation by the world at large, it was the Copernican system.
Consider this hypothesis with a mind unbiased by modern education. The conception is clearly and demonstrably false. To suppose that the solid earth, the firm basis of all things, is flying through space without support, contradicts our most obvious perceptions. It is opposed to every intuition of common sense and reason. And furthermore, to say that the sun does not revolve round the earth, rising and seting day by day, contradicts the plain statements of Scripture. From whatever angle we view it, this revolutionary hypothesis outraged the popular sentiment of the time. As President Butler of Columbia has recently said, ‘A university teacher owes a decent respect to the opinions of mankind. Men who feel that their personal convictions require them to treat the mature opinion of the civilized world without respect or with active contempt, may well be given an opportunity to do so from private station, and without the added influence and prestige of a university’s name.’
Owing to the limitations of mental medicine at that time, Galileo and his forerunners escaped incarceration in a lunatic asylum. But the irreconcilability of the heliocentric view with Scripture could scarcely be ignored by the Church authorities. Copernicus — who propounded the theory in 1543 — and his immediate disciples were fortunate enough to remain unmolested. The notion of academic freedom existed even then in Germany. Moreover, many theologians, Luther among the rest, regarded the theory as too absurd for serious consideration.
In Italy the church assumed the right to control academic inquiry and instruction. Galileo was summoned before an ecclesiastical court and tried. His teachings were condemned, and in 1616 he was strictly enjoined to silence. In 1630 the strength of his convictions compelled him to undertake a defense of the doctrine. He was again brought to trial in 1633, found guilty, constrained to abjure his dangerous heresy, and sentenced to daily penance.
Surely no doctrine ever seemed more worthy of repression. The Copernican theory flies squarely in the face of everyday facts. And yet time has justified it, even to the popular mind. With such an example confronting him, how can the layman ever presume to condemn the carefully framed views of a trained scholar?
A similar conflict between expert and untrained judgment arose during the early days of Darwin’s biological theory. Darwin himself was not a candidate for academic preferment, and the controversies into which he was drawn need not concern us. But many of his followers, especially in America, were confronted with a choice between intellectual dishonesty and the sacrifice of their career.
When James McCosh was called from Scotland to the presidency of Princeton in 1868, theologians in this country counted upon his staunch orthodoxy to assist in stamping out the baleful doctrine. But McCosh was too thorough a scholar to admit that scientific theory could be refuted by mere citation of Scripture. His influence was exerted in behalf of the new hypothesis with telling effect in orthodox circles.
Yet despite the declaration of many noted scholars and some theologians in favor of Darwinism there were numerous cases of its suppression during the seventies. These are given with some detail in Andrew D. White’s Warfare of Science and Theology. Even as late as 1884, James Woodrow, professor of natural science in a Presbyterian seminary at Columbia, South Carolina, was compelled to resign his chair for his advocacy of the theory of evolution. At present the biologists appear to have won the right to teach the truth as they understand it.
Interference with freedom of inquiry and instruction in recent years has been largely confined to the departments of philosophy, psychology, and economics, particularly the last. Philosophic theory and psychological principles occasionally come into conflict with traditional ecclesiastical interpretations. Only last year, for example, Dr. John M. Mecklin, professor of philosophy and psychology at Lafayette College, resigned under pressure on account of alleged lack of harmony between his teachings and the traditions of his institution. Fortunately he had no difficulty in obtaining a position elsewhere.
This summer the head of the psychological department at a state university, a psychologist in good standing, was dismissed on indefinite charges, his petition for a faculty committee of inquiry being denied. At one of the state normal schools an assistant professor of psychology of several years’ standing was dismissed without warning after a brief hearing before the board.
The researches of economists and sociologists often conflict with the interests of political leaders and organized wealth. In 1895 Professor Bemis of Chicago, and in 1900 Professor Ross of Stanford, were retired from their chairs in economics. Friends of the men claimed, in each case, that pressure had been exerted by patrons of the institution on account of certain economic doctrines which they taught. This the university authorities denied. In neither instance was the truth ever brought out. No academic body existed with authority to investigate the facts, and inquiries by scholars unconnected with the institutions in question were regarded as an unwarranted interference.
In 1911 Professor Banks was dismissed from the University of Florida, following the publication of an article in The Independent, in which he stated his conviction that teachers and others in positions of influence made a grievous mistake in the generation prior to the Civil War in not paving the way for a gradual removal of slavery without the loss of so many lives and the consequent pension burden.
Early in 1913 the professor of economics and social science at Wesleyan, Dr. Willard C. Fisher, was summarily suspended after some casual remarks in a public lecture regarding the observation of the Sabbath. Last autumn Dr. J. L. Lewinsohn, professor of law at the University of North Dakota, resigned under pressure, the authorities having disapproved of his active participation in the political campaign. He claims to have been censured by the dean for attending a conference of leaders of the Progressive party.
During the past winter it was charged in the press that Dr. King and Dr. Nearing, two economists in the Wharton School of Finance at the University of Pennsylvania, had been denied deserved promotion on account of some statistical inquiries relating to local and state enterprises.
In March Professor A. E. Morse relinquished the chair of political science at Marietta College, Ohio. He claims to have been ‘practically forced to resign for political reasons.’ This the authorities deny. No judicial body has thus far determined whether freedom of teaching was infringed in this instance. But the attitude of the college toward the principle of academic freedom is announced in an official bulletin dealing with the case. It reminds the faculty that ‘it is the sacred duty of the trustees to administer the affairs of the institution according to their own judgment and the dictates of their own conscience.’ At the close of the session two members of the faculty, friends of Dr. Morse, were offered the choice of resignation or dismissal. No charges were formulated in the resolution which summarily cancelled their professional license. Both men were professors of several years’ standing and heads of departments.
IV
Few scholars will deny that the good name of a university or college sometimes demands the exercise of executive authority toward teachers as well as toward students. But there is a growing sentiment that members of the profession should be amenable to academic courts in all matters affecting academic standing. At present the responsibility for action in matters of discipline usually devolves upon the president or chancellor. Generally this official is both judge and jury. From his decision there seems to be no effective appeal. Occasionally the board pronounces the verdict and the president acts as executioner. A very exceptional instance occurred last March, when President Bowman, of the State University of Iowa, offered his resignation on the ground that the Board had dismissed a member of the Faculty without consulting the president, and without giving the accused member a hearing.
In most American institutions of learning the faculty has nothing whatever to do with the dismissal of its members, and often the first intimation of the resignation or suspension of a colleague is received through the public press. One may assent to the justice of the dismissal while resenting the manner in which it was brought about. In one of the cases already mentioned a colleague of the man dismissed told me that he considered the action perfectly just, but the manner absolutely unjustifiable. At a leading eastern university, where several members of the faculty have been removed by executive action within the past few years, one member has stated privately that in his judgment the president’s policy is right, although the mode of procedure has been somewhat despotic. Some of his colleagues dissent from this view, believing the dismissals to have been wholly unjust. In the absence of impartial investigation and report, the outsider is at a loss which statement to accept.
If criticism were confined to the radicals and agitators in our profession it would carry little weight. There are firebrands in the academic world as well as mossbacks, and the utterances of both may be discounted. But sane and solid men have joined in the criticism. Such expression of disapproval by reputable scholars, whether within or without the institution concerned, has never, so far as I know, secured a retrial for the accused, or restored him to his position. In one instance, to my personal knowledge, an eminent scholar deprecated any action in behalf of a certain professor who had lost his place, on the ground that college authorities always look with suspicion upon a man who makes a fuss. He feared that a protest might seriously injure his colleague’s future.
A few institutions recognize the propriety of seeking expert testimony in matters affecting a scholar’s professional standing. For some time it has been the practice at Yale to consult the faculty in questions of call and promotion. More recently at Princeton the trustees voluntarily declared in favor of department recommendation, and voted to confer on academic questions with a committee elected by the faculty. At Cornell, President Schurman has suggested that one third of the board consist of faculty representatives, on the ground that the faculty is essentially the university. These are all steps in the right direction; but they are exceptions to general practice and there are certain situations which they do not meet. In institutions where one man constitutes a whole department it would be difficult to convince any board that his judgment was unbiased in matters pertaining to his own status. Moreover, in questions of call and promotion the average board is prone to consider the situation largely from a local standpoint, taking no account of the broad university sentiment in the country at large. It fails to get the true perspective. One can scarcely blame its members for this. Laymen cannot be expected to entertain a higher regard for the scholastic vocation than is entertained by scholars themselves.
V
The sense of professional responsibility has been slow to awake in scholars. It is only within the past year that any active attempt has been made to safeguard their professional rights. The spirit of the time is shown in the fact that three independent steps have been taken almost simultaneously. Two of these affect particular branches of learning. The third aims at a general organization of scholars similar to the medical and bar associations.
The first active step was taken in connection with the forced resignation of the professor of philosophy and psychology at Lafayette. Dr. Mecklin’s colleagues at other institutions were not satisfied that he had received fair treatment. They could not ascertain that definite charges had been formulated against, him, or that testimony had been called for in his behalf. The American Philosophical Association and the American Psychological Association, to both of which Professor Mecklin belonged, appointed a joint committee to investigate the case.
This committee felt bound to respect the definite restrictions upon freedom of teaching which were implied in the denominational character of the college. But they soon found that the charter of Lafayette expressly declared against any theological limitations whatsoever. Furthermore, the accused insisted that his teachings were in perfect harmony with the tenets of his denomination. He is a Presbyterian minister in good standing, and it appeared that his orthodoxy had never been called in question by his own ecclesiastical authorities.
The committee found that while no definite charges had ever been formulated against Dr. Mecklin, he had been given the very indefinite task of explaining his opinions and teachings to the president. The president himself refused to aid the committee in its endeavor to clear up the situation. He held that he could not with propriety discuss with outsiders questions affecting the college and its members, even though the professional standing of a colleague was at stake. To this position the committee replied in no uncertain terms. The report closes as follows: —
‘The attitude thus assumed does not seem to this committee one which can with propriety be maintained by the officers of any college or university toward the inquiries of a representative national organization of college and university teachers and other scholars. We believe it to be the right of the general body of professors of philosophy and psychology to know definitely the conditions of the tenure of any professorship in their subject; and also their right, and that of the public to which colleges look for support, to understand unequivocally what measure of freedom of teaching is guaranteed in any college, and to be informed as to the essential details of any case in which credal restrictions, other than those to which the college officially stands committed, are publicly declared by responsible persons to have been imposed. No college does well to live unto itself to such a degree that it fails to recognize that in all such issues the university teaching profession at large has a legitimate concern. And any college hazards its claim upon the confidence of the public and the friendly regard of the teaching profession by an appearance of unwillingness to make a full and frank statement of the facts in all matters of this sort.’
The report of this committee was read at a joint meeting of the two associations last Christmas. It was approved by unanimous vote, and was ordered printed at the expense of the associations. Copies were sent to the trustees of the institution in question. By a notable coincidence the president of this college offered his resignation within two weeks after the publication of the report, and the resignation was promptly accepted.
A somewhat similar move has since been made in another branch of learning. At its meeting in Washington last Christmas the American Political Science Association appointed a committee of three ‘to examine and report upon the present situation in American educational institutions as to liberty of thought, freedom of speech, and security of tenure for teachers of political science.’ Similar committees were appointed at the same time by the Economics Association and the American Sociological Society, meeting in other parts of the country. The three committees, acting jointly, have voted to investigate the dismissal of Professor Fisher from Wesleyan University.
VI
Far wider in importance than these acts of special societies is the new movement looking toward the formation of a National Association of College Professors. This was first broached in the spring of 1913 by a number of prominent professors at Columbia and Johns Hopkins. A canvass was made of the attitude toward such an association at ten leading universities, resulting in the call for a preliminary meeting. This was held last November in Baltimore, and was attended by unofficial representatives of Harvard, Yale, Princeton, Columbia, Cornell, Wisconsin, Clark, and Hopkins.
After considerable discussion it was decided that membership in the new association should be based on a scholar’s professional standing without reference to the particular institution with which he chanced to be connected. The chairman of the meeting was authorized to appoint a committee of twenty-five, representing the various departments of learning, whose duty should be to arrange a plan of organization and draw up a constitution. The committee has since been announced. It includes men of national reputation drawn from every field of learning. Professor Dewey of Columbia was selected as chairman.
The character of the men who are promoting this movement indicates somewhat the manner in which it will proceed. It will not be a grievance society or a trade union of the economic type. The men composing the committee are too well balanced to accept any such programme. Their ideals are too high, their interests too scholarly. Throughout the discussion they have had constantly in mind the pattern of the medical and bar associations. The chief purpose of the Association of College Professors will be to elevate the standards of the teaching profession, by promoting self-respect, initiative, and responsibility.
This aim can be furthered in many ways, as appeared from the suggestions received during the preliminary canvass of the universities and at the meeting of delegates. For example, there is room for considerable improvement in the method of filling chairs. It is fair to assume that presidents and boards wish to secure the best man available for any given position. At present the method of selection is rather crude. There is no systematic way of ascertaining what candidates are available. A chance word sometimes turns the scale. A recommendation from those who are not qualified to judge of a candidate’s professional attainments may carry the day.
It would of course be a gigantic task for any committee to acquaint itself with the qualifications and status of every man in all our higher institutions. But the establishment of some central bureau would aid the selection considerably. It would lessen the number of able men remaining year after year without promotion or betterment. It might also lessen the number of unworthy men who are advanced through favoritism. Such cases are rare. But there have been instances of men advanced rapidly, not on account of real merit but through the influence of some trustee or patron.
The dismissal of professors is another problem, and one of great delicacy, which the new Association must face. It has been asked to endorse unequivocally the principle that no searcher after truth should be dismissed from an institution of higher learning without trial by his peers, and that no professor should be compelled to resign merely because his views conflict with public opinion. Whether such a principle be formulated or not, the Association will be called upon to define its attitude in particular cases, where political, economic, or theological grounds underlie the popular criticism. Friction in many instances will be avoided if an authoritative committee of scholars declares that certain criticized views are perfectly debatable; such a declaration will be the more effective if the teachings in question do not coincide with the theories held by members of the committee.
The mode of selecting the college executive may possibly receive attention by the Association. I do not believe, with Professor Cattell, that the presidency should be made a purely honorary office, the incumbent changing year by year and receiving no additional compensation for his executive services. The executive head of an institution of learning occupies a position of peculiar responsibility and deserves special remuneration. A man of tact and executive ability should not be compelled to relinquish the presidency at the end of a year’s service. At the same time it seems obvious that the man who controls academic policy should be directly responsible to the academic body. It would appear almost axiomatic that the college president or university rector should be chosen by the faculty, or by some selected group of scholars in which the faculty of the institution in question is adequately represented. The function of the president is to voice the sentiment of the faculty in directing the academic policy, rather than to dictate that policy.
The trustees are the legal guardians of an institution’s endowment and finances. The academic body cannot share these duties, and the new Association can have nothing to do with the economic side. Professor Lovejoy of Johns Hopkins believes that the trustees ‘should not only raise and safeguard the funds required for the educational purposes of the institution, but should also have the ultimate power of decision, though not the sole voice, in determining the general scope of the institution’s work; should decide, for example, when new schools are to be established. For a question of this kind is largely a question whether, in a given community, a specific need, and also a possibility of support, exists for a specified extension of educational activity. And such questions are as much the concern of the lay public as of the professor. . . .
‘They should have power, if gross extravagance or notorious educational inefficiency appears in any department, to withhold appropriations from that department until they receive guarantees from the president and faculty that conditions will be set right. They should have a veto in the determination of the general range of salaries — since professors no more than other men ought to fix wholly for themselves the remuneration of their own type of service — but should have no voice in determining individual salaries. And they should have a veto upon the election of a president. . . .
‘But beyond these limits a university should be a self-governing republic of scholars. The professors should elect their own president, with the consent and advice of the trustees; they should, through the president and an elective council, make all appointments, promotions, changes in salaries, and the like. From them all academic honors should proceed. Their control over educational policies should extend to such matters as the acceptance or rejection of gifts and bequests; and they should have coördinate powers with the trustees in the fixation of tuition-fees and other charges.’
The functions of this new Association of scholars should by no means be confined to the relation between faculty and corporation. Indeed its most promising work seems to be in other fields. The adjustment of relations between professor and student, between the scholar and the world at large, and between scholar and scholar, comes distinctly within its province.
The medical association prescribes strict rules concerning the relation of physician to patient, and of specialist to general practitioner. The physician is expected to answer an emergency call, even when no remuneration is assured. The medical association has declared very definitely that a physician must not patent any prescription; all new formulas which he discovers are the property of the profession. But he is allowed to copyright his books, and he may be retained in legal cases as a professional expert.
No such definite regulations exist in the scholastic profession. There are instances where a laboratory has claimed the ownership of apparatus devised by one of its students and the latter has protested. Some investigators patent their laboratory devices; others offer them freely to the profession. Such points of etiquette should be definitely settled in a carefully formulated code. Definite rulings should prescribe to what extent a professor may be expected or given opportunity to deliver popular lectures, and how far research and literary activities may properly share his time with classroom work. It might also be determined to what extent one is bound to supply a colleague’s place temporarily in cases of illness, and whether a professor in good standing should accept a chair from which a colleague has been removed without trial.
The Association might discuss as matters of general policy what sabbatical leave should be accorded to the different grades, and whether advancement in grade and salary should ever depend on mere length of service apart from proved efficiency. It should certainly devise some equitable arrangement which would obviate the necessity of making undignified pleas for advancement in one’s own behalf.
No less important is the protection of the junior members of the staff from undue exactions by their superiors. The youngest instructor may claim some rights. He should not be overburdened with the task of reading examination papers for others, or perfecting apparatus for which his senior receives the entire credit.
With so many possibilities for action confronting it, the new association will do well to proceed slowly, cautiously, and tactfully. It may be years before the Association of College Professors attains the standing enjoyed by the medical or bar associations. But the new movement marks an important advance in the cause of academic freedom and professional responsibility.
The standing of a university depends above all things on the character of its faculty. It needs not only good teachers, but men of ideals, investigators unhampered by fear of material consequences in presenting the truth as they see it. To foster such a group of scholars, the sense of professional responsibility must be cultivated. The group spirit of any profession can be aroused only by the removal of external constraint and the cultivation of self-restraint.
Few benefactors to the cause of learning attain the self-abnegation shown by Lord Gifford in the endowment of his famous lectureship in Natural Religion. The deed of gift, made public in 1887, contains these memorable words: ‘The lecturers appointed shall be subjected to no test of any kind, and shall not be required to take an oath, or to emit or subscribe any declaration of belief, or to make any promise of any kind ... provided only that the patrons will use diligence to secure that they be sincere lovers of and earnest inquirers after truth.’ May the time come when all educational benefactions shall rest on these broad and indestructible foundations.