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
We have referred to the Harvard Liberal Club, an organization formed by
some graduates who sympathized with the cause of social justice. This
club brought speakers to Harvard, and got itself into the newspapers
several times; for example, during the anti-red hysteria they heard an
address from Federal Judge Anderson, who denounced the Palmer raids as
crimes against the constitution. This caused President Lowell great
annoyance, but he could not control the club, because it was a graduate
organization. He demanded that it abandon the name Harvard, saying it
might cause people to get a wrong idea of the university. Inquiries were
made to ascertain if legal measures could be taken; and when he found
that such measures wouldn’t work, he came to one of its meetings, very
courteous and deeply interested, trying to steer it into ways of
academic propriety. “We are all liberals at Harvard,” he said—an old,
old formula! For a generation the British labor party has been hearing
from the Tories: “We are all Socialists in England.”
Just how much of a liberal President Lowell is, of his own impulse and
from his own conviction, was shown at the time that Louis D. Brandeis
was nominated by President Wilson for the Supreme Court. Brandeis is a
graduate of the Harvard Law School, and was a prosperous corporation
lawyer in Boston; a man of European culture and charming manners, he was
the darling of Harvard, in spite of the fact that he is a Jew. The Lees
and the Higginsons took him up—until suddenly he ran into the New Haven
railroad! Then the other crowd, the Kidders and the Peabodys, took him
up—until he ran into the gas company! After that everybody dropped him,
and if he had not been a man of wealth he would have been ruined. When
he was proposed for the Supreme Court, a committee of lawyers, with
Austen G. Fox, a Harvard man, at their head, took up the fight against
him in the United States Senate. This fight didn’t involve Harvard, and
there was no reason for President Lowell to meddle in it; but he made it
his personal fight, and a fight of the most determined and bitter
character.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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