Academic Freedom

President Van Hise and the Class of 1910

The next major controversy over academic freedom occurred between 1908 and 1915, and arose largely for the same reason as the Ely case—regent disapproval of professorial criticism of existing social and economic arrangements and a public divided about what speech should be protected.1 The public discussion began with a newspaper article in November of 1908.

Milwaukee Journal:2 Some members of the UW Board of Regents believe some departments are too liberal. They intend to intervene, most likely in the affairs of Professor Richard T. Ely or his former students Edward A. Ross and John R. Commons. Moreover, the regents have adopted a promotion policy designed primarily to reward teaching in order to curtail objectionable research. Many professors perceive these developments to be threats by the regents to censor faculty teaching and research.

Just three months later, in February of 1909, the nationally known journalist Lincoln Steffens published an article praising the progressive Wisconsin political platform and the state university’s active role in the life of Wisconsinites. Thus, he included a barb at the regents for their interference with the University’s efforts to promote economic and social progress, and reported that many professors felt stifled in their teaching and research by conservative regent pressure.3 Ironically, Steffens had come to Madison hoping to find the dirt on progressive leader Bob La Follette and his connections with the university, but instead came away converted to progressivism and the Wisconsin Idea.

In July 1909 faculty fears heightened when Richard Lloyd Jones reported in Colliers magazine that several regents were trying to silence members of the economics department because of their support for public utilities regulation and resource conservation.4 Reportedly, these regents also sought to depose UW President Charles R. Van Hise because of his tolerance for their “radicalism.” Two days later, the Milwaukee Journal reported that some of the business-minded regents objected to professors who opposed unchecked private exploitation of natural resources, sought to prevent them from advising the legislature, and opposed faculty research into problems related to corporate wealth and power.5

That fall, after the eminent historian Frederic Jackson Turner left Madison to join the faculty at Harvard University in November of 1909, allegedly to protest regent interference with academic freedom, President Van Hise had a frank discussion with the regents about faculty concerns. The discussion led to a compromise in which the regents agreed to respect customary methods of educational instruction and the faculty acknowledged the good intentions of the regents.6

The truce did not last even a month. In January 1910, the regents unanimously voted to censure sociology professor Edward A. Ross, Ely’s former student, for defending the right of the anarchist and feminist Emma Goldman to speak in Madison,7 for giving her a tour of the campus, and for inviting the progressive educator Parker Sercombe of Chicago to address his class.8 The problem was not Sercombe’s educational theories or lecture topic, it was his private advocacy of free love.9 State newspapers immediately took up the debate for and against Ross and the situation intensified when two regents interested in privately exploiting water resources censured professor Eugene A. Gilmore10 for his report to the state Conservation Commission recommending that the state take repossess all waterpower that private owners had not developed. Ross likely would have been fired rather than censured at the March 2, 1910 regents meeting but for the solid backing of President Van Hise.11

Van Hise:12 It has been suggested that Professor Ross be removed from his professorship at the University. I do not know whether or not this suggestion is to be seriously considered; but it is clear to me that such an action would be wholly indefensible. In the first place it would be an injustice; for the mistakes which professor Ross has made are no sufficiently grave to have more weight than years of service as a teacher highly appreciated by his students, including many of the higher grade; second, the removal of a professor on the grounds considered would damage the University most seriously in the eyes of the academic world. The effects of such a drastic action as the removal of a professor holding a continuing appointment for so inadequate a cause would not be overcome for years.

As newspaper editorials raged back on forth on the issue of campus “radicals,” the class of 1910 began to take its own stand. When Lincoln Steffens returned to Madison in early 1910 after the Ross affair to find out what the situation really was, he remarked to Fred MacKenzie, editor of La Follette’s Weekly, that the 1894 regent statement endorsing academic freedom had never received the public attention it deserved. MacKenzie then suggested to James Thompson, a politically active member of the class of 1910 and editor of the Daily Cardinal (a faculty-owned campus newspaper), that the class cast the statement in bronze and give it to the university as its customary parting gift. The class memorial committee then petitioned to hang the plaque on Bascom Hall, the university’s administrative center and location of regent meetings, but the politically conservative-dominated board of regents rejected the request.13 Still, class orator Carl F. Nafftz of Madison presented the gift to the university in the person of Professor William A. Scott of the Commerce Department, and President Van Hise seized the opportunity to reiterate the need for academic freedom, a university education broader than just material gain, and a class memorial gift that was “really worth while.”

However, public suspicion of “radicalism” at the university continued, and just two years later, in 1912, Van Hise again spoke out boldly in defense of academic freedom in his commencement address after organized religious groups attacked the philosopher Max Otto for criticizing theism (belief in god) in his course, “Man and Nature.”14

Van Hise:15 Nowhere is there fixity or completeness in regard to human relations any more than with regard to physical or chemical relations. This freedom of thought, this inquiry after truth for its own sake, this adjustment of knowledge of the past in the light of the newest facts and highest reason—this is the essential spirit of the university, which under no circumstances should it yield. Without this spirit an institution is not a university; with this spirit, it is a university, whether it be large or small…[T]he spirit of the university is in irreconcilable conflict with those who hold that the present state of affairs is the best possible, who believe that existing conventions, morals, and political and religious faiths are fixed. Conflicting opinions should be fairly presented, and personal opinions stated with humility and the realization that ultimate truth has nowhere been reached, that the advancement of tomorrow may modify the statement of today. The people must be willing to give freedom for its own sake, without regard to the belief of the teaching staff. They must have faith to believe that it is best that truth shall prevail, faith to believe that truth will prevail if there be full liberty of teaching and learning.

This same year, after further lobbying by the Class of 1910 and numerous progressive appointments to the Board of Regents by republican governor Francis E. McGovern, the regents finally voted to accept the plaque, but not to display it on any other campus building.16 Rather, the memorial was left in the basement of Main Hall (now Bascom Hall). Obviously, the regents were not completely sold on the idea of academic freedom.

Neither was President Van Hise. Two years later, when war hostilities broke out in Europe, Van Hise put his fears about unpopular press and public opinion ahead of his concern for academic freedom when in September of 1914 he officially requested faculty refrain from discussing the European conflict both inside and outside the classroom.17 Fortunately, Regent James Trottman from Milwaukee immediately wrote Van Hise, explaining how this threatened academic freedom, and the president backed off (though only until the U.S. entered the war).

Meanwhile, the Class of 1910 continued their campaign to get their memorial placed on a prominent campus building. In 1915, as their five-year neared, the alumni once again took up their lobbying to win regent approval for posting their plaque. Prominent placards were put up around Madison and alumni met and corresponded with regents.18 Some appealed directly to the public.

Milton J. Blair (class attendance chairman):19 The bronze tablet with its troublesome inscription lies in the dust of a university building basement. This memorial epitomizes the thing for which the University is now fighting. The Class of 1910 is making a determined effort to have its memorial placed on the campus at its Quinquennial Reunion this spring. The granting or withholding of consent may indicate whether the University will continue to be a great educational institution or will become merely the dispenser of a particular brand of certified orthodoxy.

Richard Lloyd Jones:20 While the tombstones of other classes have found permanent place to make our campus look ridiculous, the class tablet of 1910 with its heroic challenge secreted away in some darkened cellar, and the Regents have not yet found a place for it in the light of day. Returning classmen will ask embarrassing questions. Why has it been set up against a cellar wall? What does it say that so embarrasses the university it cannot be displayed? Let the Regents answer.

After considerable discussion and negotiation, the Board of Regents finally voted to display the plaque, on the condition that the Class of 1910 retract its allegations against the regents for violating academic freedom.21 An agreeable retraction was quickly composed, and prominent supporters of academic freedom declared victory at the ceremony dedicating the memorial and placing it on University Hall.

Van Hise:22 The principles of academic freedom have never found expression in language so beautiful, words so impressive, phrases so inspiring. It was twenty-one years ago that these words were incorporated into a report of the Board of Regents exonerating a professor from the charge of “socialism” that was brought against him. This professor had incurred the displeasure of some who regarded socialism as so dangerous that they wanted no mention of this great social fact made at the university. This report back in 1894 marks one of the great landmarks in the history of the University. And from that day to this, no responsible party or no responsible authority has ever succeeded in restricting freedom of research and teaching within these walls. There are no “sacred cows” at Wisconsin. There is no such thing as “standardized” teaching in any subject. Professors and instructors present faithfully the various sides of each problem. Their duty is to train the students to independent thinking. They are in no sense propagandists for any class or interest. A university to be worthy of its name must be progressive—not progressive in the partisan sense, but in the dictionary sense. I would not care to have anything to do with a university that was not progressive.

Joseph E. Davies:23 The Class of 1910 had rendered a great service to the University of Wisconsin, and to those ideals in education and government, which the University of Wisconsin has come to stand for in so splendid a way, throughout the world. The principle which is enunciated in bronze on the tablet…is the expression of a spirit which has made the University of Wisconsin great in fame and great in the service which it has rendered…that principle has become settled, and cemented into the very foundation of the University, and into the relation of the state toward academic freedom…Never again will the questions be raised. The issue has been settled and determined. The dedication, in my judgment, of your memorial tablet signalizes the permanent redemption of the great principle, which is vital to our great University, and to the enduring interests of the citizens of the commonwealth.

Our second story, the story of President Van Hise and the Class of 1910, thus appears to end with a free speech victory of a sort too, and includes plenty of fine-sounding endorsements of academic freedom. However, it is important to note that the Regents formally censured Professor Ross (and others) for expressions of their opinions during the 1908-1915 period and undoubtedly “chilled” the voices of many faculty and students, and the mass hysteria and intolerance of World War I soon led to further attempts to silence voices thought too “radical” to go unpunished.

Notes

1 See, e.g., Curti and Carstensen, Vol. II, pp. 57-73.

2 Paraphrases from Milwaukee Journal, Nov. 30, 1908.

3 Lincoln Steffens, “Sending a State to College,” American Magazine 67 (Feb 1909), p. pp. 349-64.

4 Jones, “Among La Follette’s People,” Colliers (July 17, 1909), p.9, Buenker, p. 32.

5 Milwaukee Journal, July 19, 1909, p.1.

6 Curti and Carstensen, Vol. II, pp. 59-62.

7 Goldman came to Madison between January 25 and 27, 1910, meeting the student Socialist Club at the Y.M.C.A. and giving a lecture downtown.

8 Buenker, p. 33.

9 Herfurth, pp. 71-2.

10 Gilmore later became vice-governor of the Phillipines and president of the University of Iowa.

11 Herfurth, pp. 72-3. In private, however, Van Hise admonished Ross for a serious mistake in judgment in mentioning Emma Goldman in his classes.

12 Record of the Board of Regents, March 2, 1910.

13 Record of the Board of Regents, July 22, 1910. Herfurth maintains that the basis for the rejection stated by the regents (it would deface university buildings and turn the campus into a morgue) was bogus. The real reasons were that the regents despised Lincoln Steffens (from whom the original idea came), saw it as an attempt by progressives to and student radicals to embarrass the Stalwart-dominated board, and because they did not believe they had violated academic freedom in the Ross case. See Herfurth, p. 79.

14 Curti and Carstensen, Vol. II, pp. 53-4.

15 From “Spirit of a University,” (Madison, 1912) in Curti and Carstensen, Vol. II, p. 54. Van Hise elaborated on these comments to a group from the City Club of Philadelphia visiting Madison on May 23, 1913, which is reprinted in its entirety in Curti and Carstensen, Vol. II, pp. 611-624.

16 Record of the Board of Regents, April 25, 1912.

17 Curti and Carstensen, Vol. II, pp. 56-7.

18 Herfurth, pp. 80-1.

19 Blair, New Republic 3 (May 15, 1915), p. 44.

20 Jones, Wisconsin State Journal, (May 19, 1915).

21 Herfurth reports that the regents in 1910 were composed of 10 Stalwarts (conservatives) and 5 Progressives, and the political partisanship was intense enough that at least one regent, W.D. Hoard, resigned in 1911 from the board in disgust. Yet Hoard was an unwavering Stalwart who disapproved of the increasing number of Progressives appointed to the board and sought to hamper the growth of the university for conservative reasons. In 1915, the Board of Regents had 9 progressives and 6 Stalwarts.

22 Wisconsin State Journal, (June 16, 1915), reprinted in Herfurth, p. 86.

23 Wisconsin State Journal, (June 14, 1915), reprinted in Herfurth, p. 86. As Davies was unable to attend the ceremony, class president Francis R. Duffy read his letter to the crowd.