Old Colonel Blethen of the “Times” is dead, and the University of the Chimes now has as its first grand duke a gentleman who is president of a bank, a commercial company, an investment company, an irrigating company, and a mortgage and a loan company; he is assisted by a politician and lobbyist, chairman of the appropriations committee of the state legislature. In twenty-five years, I am informed, there has never been a farmer or a labor representative on the board! The university remains a place of low standards, no academic achievements, and perpetual cheap advertising by the administration. Three different men have written me to tell how they have been strangled—but always warning me not to use their names—not even to tell the details of their experiences! One writes about another professor, not in any sense a radical, but who tells the truth about public questions, and as a result has been an object of attack for twenty-five years:
Most of the time it has been under cover and has consisted in efforts to bring pressure to bear on the president and board of regents. But a number of times it has come out into the open. A governor some years ago in his inaugural address announced his determination to bring about the removal of Professor ——, and a few times an effort has been made in the legislature to make elimination of his department a condition of legislative support for the university. But while a good deal of publicity was given to these more spectacular assaults on academic freedom, they had little effect except perhaps to strengthen the administrative conviction that such departments were a good deal of a nuisance. Far more effective are the ever active forces which are working silently without any publicity upon those in control—president and regents. Nor does the failure to exercise power to remove indicate necessarily lack of real influence. There are many ways of disciplining an obstreperous faculty member without actual removal. A president in his control of salaries, distribution of library and other departmental funds may withhold from an offending faculty member opportunities accorded to those who have not incurred his displeasure. In the course of my experience as a faculty member I have seen a good deal of the sinister side of university control.