The University of Wisconsin has the reputation of being the most liberal institution of higher education in the United States, and on the whole I think the reputation is deserved. I have shown what a struggle it took to introduce one little impulse of new thinking into the place; and you must realize that every mite of freedom has been won by the same struggle, and the maintaining of it depends upon somebody’s willingness to be disagreeable. I talked with one professor, who is known throughout the United States as a writer and lecturer, not a Socialist, but a tireless advocate of social justice. This man has won, and he holds grimly the right to have his own say and his own way. He assigns to his graduate students “The Brass Check” as required reading, and as their thesis they make a study of some capitalist newspaper in its handling of half a dozen crucial public issues, such as the steel strike and Mexican intervention. The rub comes when the professor goes outside and lectures to city clubs and chambers of commerce, and gets into the newspapers in favor of the recognition of Soviet Russia. Then all the reactionaries in the state clamor for his scalp. He said to me: “They say a fox learns to enjoy being chased, and in the same way I have had to learn to enjoy outmatching my enemies. I feel that I am being stalked by a band of thugs; I have to set out deliberately and consciously to build up my prestige throughout the state, to keep myself in the public mind, so that my enemies won’t dare go beyond abusing me. Manifestly, that means that academic freedom is only for the man who has a tough skin and can be happy in a fight. The young man, also the weak man, is helpless; if he tries to tell the truth about anything, he’ll have to go out and write life insurance for a living.” Such is the judgment, after nearly two decades’ experience, of one of America’s freest college professors, in America’s freest university. That many men should fail in such a test is inevitable. There is another professor in the university, an elderly man, who began his career as a Socialist of the academic type; he is the author of standard books on Socialism, and all through the years when he made his reputation he recognized the unearned increment of land as a grave form of social injustice. He has now changed his views, and has become the tamest of conservatives, a pitiable figure. It happened recently that a friend of mine was in his office, and discovered an economic basis for this transformation. Some one wanted to buy some lots from the old professor; and the price was two thousand dollars each, he said. He listened to some protest of the would-be purchaser; then he said: “I know; the price was eighteen hundred a couple of weeks ago, but it has now gone up.”