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
This is known as the “Abrams case,” and it stood as one of our greatest
judicial scandals. Among others who protested was Professor Zechariah
Chafee, Jr., of the Harvard Law School. He published in the “Harvard Law
Review,” April, 1920, an article entitled “A Contemporary State Trial”;
and subsequently he embodied this article as a chapter in his book on
“Freedom of Speech.” Dean Pound of the Harvard Law School, with
Professors Frankfurter, Chafee and Sayre (President Wilson’s
son-in-law), also the librarian of the Law School, signed a petition for
executive clemency in this Abrams case. These actions excited great
indignation among the interlocking directorates, and Mr. Austen G. Fox,
a Harvard graduate and Wall Street lawyer, drew up a protest to the
Harvard board of overseers, which protest was signed by twenty prominent
corporation lawyers, all Harvard men, including Mr. Peter B. Olney, a
prominent Tammany politician; Mr. Beekman Winthrop, ex-governor of Porto
Rico, and Mr. Joseph H. Choate, Jr., recently notorious in connection
with the scandals of the Alien Property Custodian. The overseers
referred the matter to the “Committee to Visit the Law School,” which
consists of fourteen prominent servants of the plutocracy, including a
number of judges. The result was a “conference,” in reality a solemn
trial, which occupied an entire day and evening, May 22, 1921, at the
Harvard Club in Boston. Mr. Fox appeared, with a committee of his
supporters and a mass of documents in the case; also the United States
attorney and his assistant, serving as witnesses.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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