The Goose-step: A Study of American EducationSinclair, Upton
History
The Goose-step: A Study of American Education
Sinclair, Upton
Education -- United States; Universities and colleges -- United States
For example, Leon Fraser, the young instructor who has been set to work
organizing peace societies in American colleges, including Columbia!
President Butler had sent a dean to ask Professor Beard to take Fraser
into his department; now he sent the dean to ask Beard to drop Fraser
again. Professor Beard, who has a capacity for indignation, told the
dean that Fraser had done what he had been employed to do, and had done
it sincerely and capably, therefore it was his intention to propose
Fraser for a full professorship; and then Beard showed the dean to the
door. Beard took the matter to the members of his department, and they
agreed unanimously that Fraser should be promoted.
Knowing Butler as you now do, you will understand that he marked two
more victims on his blacklist. One was Fraser and the other was Beard.
Fraser was got rid of quickly; as soon as America entered the war,
Butler announced that Columbia would not need so many professors, so he
dropped three, Fraser among them. Subsequently he took back the other
two; but Fraser meantime had enlisted. The dean remarked to a friend of
mine, a Columbia professor, how fortunate it was that Fraser had gone to
the war, so that a scandal over the question of his dismissal had been
avoided. “Yes,” replied my friend, “and wouldn’t it be fortunate if he
were shot to pieces, so that he could never come back and tell how
Columbia treated him?”
The next experience in order of time is that of Professors Cattell and
Dana; but since we have seen Beard put on the blacklist, perhaps we had
better finish his story. Charles A. Beard is a sincere and determined
fighter; incidentally, he is one of America’s leading economists and
scholars. There was an uproar in the newspapers over the charge that a
labor leader, speaking at a civic center in a New York public school,
had said: “To hell with the stars and stripes.” He didn’t really say it,
as you may read in “The Brass Check,” page 344. But the New York papers
reported that he said it, so it was proposed to close all the civic
centers in the schools. Professor Beard at a public meeting stated that
he did not think it was wise to close all the schools to the public,
just because one labor leader was reported to have said, “To hell with
the stars and stripes.” So next morning one of the New York newspapers
reported that Professor Beard of Columbia University had defended a
labor leader for saying “To hell with the stars and stripes.”
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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