BY JOHN K. WILSON

Today is Remembrance Day, and the centennial of the end of World War I. It’s also a time to reflect on how academic freedom in America was silenced by war fever, and how the AAUP was a part of that repression. Here’s a excerpt from my dissertation on the history of academic freedom.

During World War I, the AAUP embraced the most repressive measures ever supported by the organization. Never before, and never again, would the AAUP call for the suppression of peaceful dissent. In part, the AAUP’s position reflected the stance of an organization eager for public approval and unwilling to sacrifice its limited credibility for the abstract principle of academic freedom during wartime. But the AAUP’s support for repression also reflected the strong support for the war itself among its leaders. John Dewey believed in academic freedom, but he also believed in this war to end all wars. Dewey convinced the New Republic’s editors to ban his former student Randolph Bourne from their magazine because Bourne disagreed with Dewey about the war (Mulcahy, 1996, 147). Even the victims of past repression supported severe wartime limits on academic freedom; Richard Ely wrote to a friend, “We cannot take the same position in time of war as we take in time of peace….A man who gives utterance to opinions which hinder us in this awful struggle deserves to be fired” (Gruber, 1975, 256).

Lovejoy condemned conscientious objectors as “an unpleasantly parasitic part in the history of human progress” (Whitfield, 1974, 69). He urged purging pacifists from academia, “whether or not they have already come within the reach of the law” (Whitfield, 1974, 70). Lovejoy declared that “such a war as this, in which the entire world is involved and the future character of human life and relations upon this planet is at issue, alters many things and suspends some of the rules of less critical and perilous times” (Gruber, 1975, 170). Lovejoy argued that colleges had to choose between being an “accomplice” in the “defeat and the dishonor of the republic,” and refusing to “give countenance and aid” to such persons (Gruber, 1975, 170-1). Lovejoy was the chair of the AAUP’s Committee on Academic Freedom in Wartime, and the report it produced in 1918 reflected his views.

Practically no one spoke up in defense of the right to dissent, and even the AAUP, which had three years earlier made the first defense of academic freedom, declared in 1918 that the war “gives rise to new problems concerning the rights and obligations of free speech.” The AAUP quickly backed off from its new commitment to academic freedom when America went to war. At times, the AAUP Report on Academic Freedom in Wartime decried special penalties aimed at faculty, but did not espouse any special freedoms for them: “university teachers should be subject to the inhibitions which, because of the exigencies of war, the government may enjoin upon all citizens alike, and to those inhibitions alone” (AAUP, 1918, 34). It noted six cases in four months of professors dismissed for “disloyalty” and declared a “presumption against supplementary disciplinary action by colleges” (AAUP, 1918, 29, 36).

Yet the Report also endorsed precisely this kind of action, and proclaimed that professors should “be required by their institutions to refrain from propaganda designed, or unmistakably tending, to cause other to resist or evade the compulsory service law or the regulations of the military authorities; and those who refuse to conform to this requirement may be, and should be, dismissed, even before any action has been taken against them by the law-officers of the state.” (AAUP, 1918, 37). The AAUP decreed that all professors must “refrain from public discussion of the war” and privately act “to avoid all hostile or offensive expressions concerning the United States or its government” (AAUP, 1918, 41). The AAUP had never proclaimed that a topic could not be discussed in public and that professors could not, even in private, criticize the government.

However, Lovejoy and the other pro-war members of the Committee were concerned about the far reach of repression on college campuses during World War I. The Report noted that a woman’s college announced, “no pro-German, pacifist or neutral sentiment will be tolerated by the college” and ordered that the dismissal of anyone whose “unqualified loyalty” to the government and support for the war was “subject to any reasonable doubt” (AAUP, 1918, 42). The Report added that “a distinguished man of science” was dismissed from an important university for “seditious or treasonable acts” for writing a letter to Congress opposing conscription without public support. The AAUP committee called it “a grave abuse of the power of dismissal” (AAUP, 1918, 45). The AAUP’s special report declared four wartime exceptions to academic freedom: 1) “conviction of disobedience to any statute or lawful executive order relating to the war”; 2) “propaganda designed, or unmistakably tending, to cause others to resist or evade the compulsory service law or the regulations of the military authorities”; 3) actions “to dissuade others to resist others from rendering voluntary assistance to the efforts of the Government”; 4) and, for Germans, violation of a requirement “to refrain from public discussion of the war; and in their private intercourse with neighbors, colleagues and students, to avoid all hostile or offensive expressions concerning the United States or its government” (AAUP, 1918, 37-41). These four “exceptions” covered practically all of the controversial issues which led to censorship; not only was any criticism of the draft or military regulations unprotected, but Germans were vulnerable to any accusation about a private conversation concerning America. Never before, and never since, had the AAUP proclaimed that a topic could not be discussed in public and that professors could not, even in private, criticize the government.

The AAUP did not seek to toe a delicate line between fierce loyalty and protection of dissent. To the contrary, the Report called those opposed to war “enemies of the state” and guilty of “treachery” (AAUP, 1918, 35). According to the AAUP’s Report, “the attitude of citizens who resist the law of military service is both ethically indefensible, and, if it is widely prevalent, gravely dangerous to the public in time of war; and in such a time the public safety is the supreme law” (AAUP, 1918, 35).

The Nation magazine criticized the AAUP report as “a serious disappointment” arguing that “By rejecting this principle, the committee, for the period of the war, hands over the keys of the castle to the enemy…” and “jeopards the very conception of a university” (“The Professors in Battle Array,” 1918). The Nation argued, “surely the university, as the home of freedom, should not go out of its way to impose on its members, in addition to these, other restrictions that are not laid on other members of the community” (“The Professors in Battle Array,” 1918).

As the Nation put it, “The fundamental error in the committee’s position, as we see it, lies in the apparent assumption that a state of war fundamentally changes the work of a university and the method of accomplishing it” (“The Professors in Battle Array,” 1918). The Nation concluded, “we have here another melancholy instance in which judgment on a great question of freedom has been warped by passionate devotion to that cause, and that the more sober reflection of quieter times, when it is too late, will lead to another answer.” (“The Professors in Battle Array,” 1918). While the AAUP never again endorsed such restrictions on academic freedom, it also never repudiated what it did during World War I, and none of the AAUP’s leader apparently ever expressed regret for the 1918 Report.

Lovejoy wrote an angry rejoinder to the Nation, far longer than the original editorial. Lovejoy argued that the AAUP report was “primarily” a rejection of “petty persecution” at some colleges (Lovejoy, 1918). But Lovejoy’s complaint had little basis in fact. While the AAUP report was mildly critical of some institutions, it did not name any of them (and the AAUP never investigated or censured any college for their actions during World War I).

Lovejoy also justified significant restrictions on academic freedom. Lovejoy offered the hypothetical examples of a professor who would “be permitted to employ his leisure in inciting other citizens to resist the draft laws; or to go about urging farmers, by adroit appeals to self-interest and class prejudice, to reduce the production of cereals” (Lovejoy, 1918). These were, to Lovejoy, self-evident examples of cases where a professor should be dismissed even if he were not prosecuted. Lovejoy argued that the AAUP had always sharply limited academic freedom, allowing the firing of a professor “for grave moral delinquencies, or for violations of professional ethics, or for gross and habitual discourtesy” (Lovejoy, 1918). Lovejoy declared that the AAUP had never adopted the Nation’s position, which he dismissed as “complete academic anarchism” (Lovejoy, 1918). As Lovejoy put it, “The committee, in short, has sought to face realities” (Lovejoy, 1918).

Lovejoy also made a startling declaration that academic freedom did not apply to communists: “The American college, if it maintained the kind of neutrality, with respect to the present struggle, which the Nation regards as essential to academic freedom, would, in fact, be not merely tolerating but facilitating the efforts of those who would repeat in America the achievement of the Lenines and the Trotzskys in Russia” (Lovejoy, 1918). This statement was particularly shocking because World War I was not fought over communism, and it indicated that Lovejoy’s sharp restrictions on academic freedom were not limited to wartime but to any perceived threat to the nation.

Metzger depicted the AAUP in World War I as fighting off overwhelming threats to academic freedom: “Suddenly, the gains for academic freedom that had painfully and gradually been won—the greater acceptance of the principle, the beginnings of a regime of academic law—were swept aside….Nothing in the experience of the professors prepared them to deal with the problem of loyalty in a time of national emergency” (Metzger, 1961, 222). But in reality, the AAUP’s report was a problem of its own making. The AAUP was not a victim of war hysteria, but an active participant in it. When even the AAUP would not support academic freedom, universities felt free to dismiss professors on the most tenuous of grounds. Allen Eaton at the University of Oregon was fired by trustees, despite being defended by the president and the faculty, because he attended a meeting of the People’s Council for Peace and Democracy and wrote a letter to the newspaper about it (Gruber, 1975, 175). Leon Whipple of the University of Virginia was denounced by fellow faculty members for his pacifism expressed in public speeches and letters to newspapers (Gruber, 1975, 176). Ernst Feise was fired at the University of Wisconsin, where 90% of the faculty, as well as the president and the deans, signed a petition condemning Senator Robert La Follette’s antiwar stand, accusing him of giving “aid and comfort to Germany and her allies” and failing “loyally to support the government in the prosecution of the war” (Gruber, 1975, 207). At the University of Michigan, C.E. Eggert, W.W. Florer, E.A. Boucke, John Dieterle, W.W. Kusterman, Herman Wiegand, and Richard Ficken were fired for crimes such as a “pro-German attitude” (Hollingsworth, 2000, 10). At the University of Nebraska, E.E. Hopt, C.E. Persinger, and G.W.A. Luckey were victims of the repression.

At the University of Illinois in 1917, President Edmund James noted that one sacrifice in war was “that you keep your mouth shut while we are in a fight” (Swanson, 1966, 316). Three faculty members at Illinois were dismissed after refusing to buy Liberty Bonds (Daily Illini, November 3, 1917). Philosophy teacher Carl Haessler was dismissed from the University of Illinois for his condemnation of the war and his pacifism. Refusing to serve in the armed forces, he was sent to Fort Leavenworth. Even supporting a pacifist could lead to retaliation. In 1918, Arthur Cole, another professor who had his loyalty questioned, started a petition immediately after the armistice to support amnesty for Haessler and other prisoners (Grisso, 1980, 559). After Cole led the formation of a faculty union (associated with the American Federation of Teachers) in 1919, the Board of Trustees reduced his appointment from three years to one year, and eliminated his pay hike. In 1920, when again they offered only a one-year appointment without a pay hike, Cole left the University (Grisso, 1980, 563).

William Schaper, a professor of political science at the University of Minnesota, was fired because he had participated in antiwar demonstrations and signed a petition opposing war. However, Schaper never had spoken his “pro-German” views in class or tried to indoctrinate students. When war began, he stopped his antiwar activities and even urged several students to join the armed forces. But in 1917, an informant to the Minnesota Public Safety Commission accused Schaper and other faculty members of “infecting” the college with the “germ” of disloyalty. Because Schaper had several first cousins in the German army, he felt he “could not boost for the war,” but he believed the law must be obeyed and no war activities hindered in any way. President M.L. Burton accused Schaper of being “the Kaiser’s man” and within a few hours, the regents had dismissed him because “his attitude of mind…and his expressed unwillingness to aid the United States in the present war, render him unfit and unable rightly to discharge the duties of his position.” The resolution declared that the war required “unqualified loyalty on the part of all teachers in the University” (Gruber, 1975, 178-79).

Schaper, who could not get an academic position until 1925, wrote to a friend, “No one who has ever known me will ever doubt my devotion to my country. It was because of my intense Americanism that I tried to keep my country out of the European war” (Gruber, 1975, 183). In 1938, the Minnesota regents admitted their error and reinstated Schaper as professor emeritus, awarding him $5,000 in reparations (Gruber, 1975, 186). But such was the paranoia at the University of Minnesota during World War I that when an ardently pro-war professor’s speech was grossly misreported in a Philadelphia newspaper, the Minnesota regents and President Burton raced to fire him until the faculty intervened to point out the mistakes (Gruber, 1975, 184).

At Columbia University, the loyalty crusade even preceded the war. In 1916, Charles Beard was brought before the trustees, charged with defending a speaker who had said “to hell with the flag” at a public meeting. Although Beard refuted the false charges, he was interrogated for half an hour about his beliefs. Beard and all political science faculty were warned against any teaching “likely to inculcate disrespect for American institutions” (Gruber, 1975, 189). Faculty members Leon Fraser and Benjamin Kendrick were called before the trustees to explain their remarks criticizing military training (Gruber, 1975, 189). In 1917, Columbia rescinded an invitation to pacifist Court Ilya Tolstoy. When faculty and students criticized this decision, a trustee committee began investigating whether subversive doctrines were being taught at the university (Gruber, 1975, 190).

At the June 6, 1917 commencement, Columbia President Nicholas Murray Butler expressed the wartime change in academic freedom: “What had been tolerated before becomes intolerable now. What had been wrongheadedness was now sedition. What had been folly was now treason….There is and will be no place in Columbia University…for any person who opposes or counsels opposition to the effective enforcement of the laws of the United States, or who acts, speaks or writes treason.” Butler concluded, “This is the University’s last and only warning to any among us…who are not with whole heart and mind and strength committed to fight with us to make the world safe for democracy” (Gruber, 1975, 199). Butler’s condemnation of academic freedom was nothing new, since many ideas had been intolerable even before the war; in 1910, he told the Columbia Board of Trustees, “Men who feel that their personal convictions require them to treat the mature opinion of the civilized world without respect or with contempt may well be given the opportunity to do so from private station and without the added influence and prestige of a university’s name” (Novick, 1988, 64). But before the war Butler had at least written, “If certain preconceived views must be taught and if certain preconceived opinions must be held, then the institution whose teachers are so restricted is not a university,” although he also wrote that “a gentleman understands that it is neither necessary nor expedient to teach to the young everything which the experience and reflection of an older man may have taught him to believe.” (Butler, 1914, 291, 294). Butler’s 1917 proclamation signaled that the small steps toward academic freedom made in the past few years had been wiped away by the war. And Columbia did not hesitate to enforce its new view of treason.

At Columbia, a Committee of Nine was established to determine “whether doctrines which are subversive of, or tend to the violation or disregard of the Constitution or the laws of the United States or of the law of the State of New York, or which tend to encourage a spirit of disloyalty to the government of the United States, or the principles upon which it is founded, are taught and disseminated by officers of the University” (Metzger, 1961, 224).

James McKeen Cattell, a leading psychology professor at Columbia for 26 years, was fired in 1917 by the trustees on the grounds of “sedition,” “treason,” and “opposition to the effective enforcement of the laws of the United States” (Gruber, 1975, 189). Columbia had tried three times earlier to make Cattell retire because of his criticisms of administration policy. It finally got a chance to get rid of him when he wrote a letter to three congressmen in support of “a measure against sending conscripts to fight in Europe against their will” (Gruber, 1975, 196). Defending conscientious objectors was considered treasonous behavior.

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana, assistant professor of comparative literature, was fired for encouraging student agitation against the Conscription Act while it was pending. Leon Fraser, instructor in politics, was dismissed for making some critical remarks about the Plattsburg military camp (Metzger, 1961, 228). In disgust at the firings and the conduct of the trustees, Charles Beard and three others professors resigned. But they were not in the majority. According to Gruber, “There is every indication of considerable faculty agreement that the opinions and activities of the two men were improper and injurious to Columbia University and to the nation” (Gruber, 1975, 204). Columbia was certainly not the only university to suppress anti-war activists.

Emily Balch, a faculty member at Wellesley for 20 years, actively opposed American intervention. In 1917-18, she took a leave of absence to spare the college embarrassment, but in 1918 the trustees decided to delay a decision on her re-appointment, and a year later they refused a re-appointment and dismissed her (Gruber, 1975, 175). The Board of Regents at the University of Texas unanimously voted in July 1917 to fire a political scientist who had helped found the People’s Council of America for Peace and Democracy, a radical anti-war group (Goldstein, 2001, 127). Simon Patten was forced out of the University of Pennsylvania by trustees offended because of his defense of “German values,” his economic and social ideas, and his “tactical error” of introducing a pacifist at a public meeting just before American intervention in the war (Gruber, 1975, 175).

In 1918, Justice Department Bureau of Investigation detectives questioned a University of Southern California professor accused of favoring Germans in his lectures. Although the professor offered many examples of “highly patriotic” excerpts from his lectures, he “was cautioned that whenever he delivered a speech of any kind to be sure he delivered it in such ringing American terms that no one would question his loyalty” (Thomas, 2008, 36).
In part because of the routine purging of radicals, college faculty were often deeply conservative. Four hundred faculty at the University of Wisconsin endorsed a petition denouncing Senator La Follette for his “unwise and disloyal utterances giving aid and comfort to the enemy” (Thomas, 2008, 124). In 1918, Professor Victor Lenher warned the Justice Department that the Wisconsin Forum (a student group which brought speakers to campus) leaned toward socialism, and advised them to investigate. After Jessica Colvin, a member of the Forum, wrote a sympathetic letter to a conscientious objector in prison, she was summoned to appear before investigators and asked if she held Socialist or pro-German views, even though she was a supporter of the war and noted that she had bought war bonds (Thomas, 2008, 124-5).

Only President Lawrence Lowell of Harvard resisted the tidal wave of repression, refusing to fire a pro-German professor whose dismissal would allow a $10 million bequest from a disgruntled alumnus (Metzger, 1961, 228-9). Few other colleges had the inclination or the deep pockets to resist the patriotic, anti-German sentiment which swept across the country. Even the language was suspect, as enrollments in German classes declined by 40% during the war (Cardozier, 1993, 122).

The war also affected the curriculum, as many universities (beginning with Columbia) began instituting War Issues or Western Civilization courses designed to explain to students the legacy of the West which they would be defending in Europe. And the stirrings of the first Red Scare were beginning. In the University of Michigan “War Aims” course, William Frayer warned students about “the wild excesses of the revolutionists,” noting that “a surprising number” of them were Jews. Frayer declared that Bolshevik sympathizers “are everywhere,” even “on the campus of the University of Michigan” (Gruber, 1975, 241). The fear-mongering during World War I about radicals and treasonous speech made repression in academia much easier to justify in the years that followed, when radicalism and the fear of the Soviet Union would become the dominant excuse for firing faculty.