Word: statements
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Dates: during 1940-1940
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Attacks Butler Statement...
President Butler tells us that this academic freedom of ours "has no meaning whatsoever" for university students; that "it relates solely to freedom of thought and inquiry and to freedom of teaching on the part of accomplished scholars." We challenge that statement. A university, as we understand a university, is a place where students as well as teachers engage in "thought and inquiry." University education is something more vital than the mere acquisition of information or the reception by the student of the ideas and opinions of his teachers. It is experience in thinking about different questions and in expressing...
...disagree no less emphatically with President Butler's statement about academic freedom as it concerns the university teacher. Here he does indeed admit that much freedom exists in some measure; but he would have us believe that it is subordinate to something which he calls the university's freedom. He urges those whose convictions bring their conduct into conflict with the university's freedom "to withdraw of their own accord from university membership...
Since these references to the university's freedom to pursue its unhampered course are immediately preceded by an emphatic statement of the duty of the university to aid and support the defence policies of the national government, these words can hardly mean anything else than that those who are convinced that these policies are mistaken should either keep silent or sever their connection with the university...
...interpreted, the statement is a denial of an essential principle which a university cannot renounce if it is to perform its proper function in our American society. For it is the special function of a university to supply the community with men who can think deeply and clearly because they are detached from the conduct of affairs and are members of a fellowship in which hard thinking and fearless statement of one's convictions are especially prized. The graver the national emergency, the greater the need for honest and courageous thinking about national problems...