CONTENTS PAGE. The Rational Limits of Academic Freedom..... Desirable Uniformity and Diversity in American Education... From Manual Training to Technical and Trades Schools.. The Democratic Advance in American Universities... The Adaptation of the Schools to Industry and Efficiency.. The School Needs of a City...... Suggestions to the Staff of the Education Department... €370 D79 7 THE RATIONAL LIMITS OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM T از JUL 1 ADDRESS DELIVERED ON THE OCCASION OF THE SIXTY-SIXTH CONVOCATION OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CHICAGO, HELD IN THE LEON MANDEL ASSEMBLY HALL, CHICAGO, ILL., MARCH 17, 1908 I have had the feeling that I was coming to the home of an old acquaintance. For ten years we were neighbors. In ways we knew not, we spurred each other to make them good, fat years in the history of university upbuilding in Illinois. When I was being urged to accept the presidency of the University of Illinois, and a few hours before the formal election, and in dread of what might be the possibilities of the event, I came to this university and met President Harper for the first time. If he had spoken in Hebrew and undertaken to examine me in Old Testament criticism, it would hardly have conflicted with what I knew of him, or with my very imperfect understanding of a modern university president. But he spoke in very kindly English, and you may be assured that he was not so unmindful of his diplomacy as to fail to urge me to come to Illinois. Neither presidents nor universities were disposed to flatter each other when events followed pleasantries and when the contacts were mainly upon surging fields of students in noisy contests, but the respect which I always had for his learning and his genius was in time enriched by the largeness of his heart and the obligations which were imposed by the tender of his friendship. And even then, Dean Judson was wont to say that state universities had the right to be; and perhaps he did more than any other to teach us all that the way to get rich in education is by giving, and that the sound prosperity of one institution of higher learning helps rather than harms another. So, as I come into the University of Chicago for a brief hour once again, there would be something unnatural, if not untrue, if I did not pay my respects to the memory of its first great president, and express my satisfaction that this university, so young and yet so great, maintains the pace and keeps the faith under a second president whose qualities and experience make him a leader of no ordinary worth to American education. And I would not have the students of this university infer that my associations have been exclusively with the presidents. Many times I have been in the crowd which has felt the impact of your [3] 69191 stern and unpitying hand, and I have given my weak but willing support to the crowd which has often flagellated you. Mr George William Curtis once remarked to me that before he had the grippe he had nothing but contempt for it, but when he got out of it he had nothing but respect for it. The grip of the University of Chicago bears no comparison with the kind of grippe to which Mr Curtis referred, for no one can remember the time when there was nothing but contempt for it; but I suspect that we shall all agree that neither of these neighboring universities has ever felt the loosening of the other's grip in sport without a noticeable enlargement of respect for the strength and the skill which were behind it. The candidates for degrees today may be comforted with the assurance that in their triumphant university hour they are not to be oppressed with admonition and preachment. I come to you with a little of the feeling of Dr Henry Van Dyke, who once said something to the effect that he stopped preaching to a great New York city church and went down to Princeton to teach the boys, because he felt the irony of exhortation or argument with veteran parishioners who had been many times saved or were apparently past all hope. Your new found veteran standing shall exempt you. Your degrees will evidence your secular salvation, and even though you were limping spiritually, as I do not suppose you are, benevolent words would seem commonplace today. The theme of the hour shall be academic freedom and the limits of conduct which will let the truth thrive. The literature of the subject is prolific but there is no clamor in the forum just now. There has been no recent crucifixion without cause. There is no one in the stocks. There is no impending trial. There is no ominous raven on a bust of the goddess of wisdom above the chamber door. Freedom may be discussed with freedom. An academic question may be treated in an academic way. The Evolution of our Higher Education The development of college and university teaching in America makes a surprising and fascinating story. Looking for the mere statistics of it, we find none of much service to us before 1870, when the reports of the Bureau of Education begin to be available. Even in 1870 the classification was much less rigid than it has since become. In that year there were 369 institutions, with 3201 teachers and 54,500 students. In 1906-rigidly excluding all schools of actual secondary grade, all preparatory departments, and all professional schools not associated with a university, but including the advanced technical schools there were 508 institutions, 21,849 teachers, and 135,834 students. In 1880 the income. of the colleges and universities was $2,225,915; in 1890 it was $10,801,918; in 1900 it was $26,550,967; and in 1906, $42,537,979. In 1880 the value of buildings and grounds was $48,427,875; in 1890 it was $80,654,520; in 1900 it was $154,203,031; and in 1906 it was $247,610,356. It is not necessary to remind a university which has been a most conspicuous leader in this great advance, how little even these figures really express. To gather and expend this money honestly and beneficiently has been a task of no ordinary difficulty, but to develop such a great throng of uniformly satisfactory college and university teachers in this brief time, we may admit between ourselves, has been practically impossible. In this single human generation all of the essential factors of a unique system of university education have developed in America. If it is not better than any other, it is better for us than any other. It is within bounds to say that there is no longer need of forcing students into the foreign life which President Harper used to lament, in order to give them as scholarly instruction as is provided anywhere in the world. We will not deny that, upon the whole, that system is different from every other. In this generation the sciences as well as the classics compelled recognition and forced their methods upon all the rest. They created colleges of their own. The applications of scientific study to the constructive and manufacturing industries came and made other colleges of their own. The higher education of women, upon an entire equality with men, and the carrying of liberal learning into numberless phases of the natural activities of women, made the men move around, and forced so much moving that some of the wise men of the East, with the best intentions and the utmost effort, have not yet been able to become quite reconciled to it. The imperative needs of the professions, and of a continually increasing number of professions, have taken up large tracts of university territory because they could not be met outside of the university enclosure. To make it possible, a great and universal system of middle schools, peculiar to the country, had to be established to connect the universities and the elementary schools; and such a system has been so highly developed that it is doing more |