A more recent test of Harvard University was made by Harold J. Laski, a brilliant young writer whom President Lowell in an unguarded moment admitted to teach political science. Laski holds unorthodox ideas concerning the modern capitalist state; he thinks it may not be the divinely appointed instrument which it considers itself. Laski raised this question in his Harvard classes, which caused tremendous excitement in State Street. The Harvard “drive” for sixteen millions was on, and a number of people wrote that they would give no money to Harvard while Laski was on its teaching staff. On the other hand, a Chicago lawyer wrote that his son had never taken any interest in his studies previously, but that since he had come under Laski’s influence he had become a serious student; this lawyer sent fifty thousand dollars to make up the losses. The controversy got into the Boston newspapers, and President Lowell stood by Laski; no Harvard professor should be driven out because of his opinions. “Thank God we are not as Columbia!” I asked a Cambridge friend about President Lowell’s heroism, and he took a cynical view of it. Lowell is the author of a book interpreting the British constitution, and has a reputation in England based on this book; he has received an Oxford degree, and hopes some day to be ambassador. In England people really believe in free speech, and practice their beliefs; and Laski, it happens, is a Manchester Jew, his family associated with the present ruling group in England. Also, Laski himself wields a capable pen, and is not the sort of man one chooses for an enemy. If Laski were to go home and state that he had been expelled from President Lowell’s university because of disbelief in the modern state, what would become of Lowell’s English reputation? Said my friend: “If Laski had been a German Jew, or a Russian Jew”—and he smiled. As to the overseers and their handling of the case, Professor Laski writes me that they were very nice to him. “I was simply invited to a dinner at which we exchanged opinions in a friendly fashion. My only doubt there was a doubt whether the committee realized how very conservative my opinions really were in this changing social world. Like most business men, they had little or no knowledge of the results of modern social science.”