[Letter, March 13, 1950]
UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA
ACADEMIC SENATE, NORTHERN SECTION
At the meeting of the Northern Section held on March 7, 1950 the Section directed that two propositions be submitted to the entire membership of the Section for vote by mail ballot. In pursuance of that direction there is enclosed herewith a ballot on which each member is requested to vote "For" or "Against" each of the propositions listed below. The ballot, when completed, should be deposited with the Registrar, at Berkeley, in the manner described on the reverse of the ballot form.
Proposition Number 1. A resolution of the Committee on Conference with the Regents offered by its Chairman, Professor M. M. Davisson, which the Northern Section of the Academic Senate on March 7 directed to be circulated to all members of the Northern Section of the Academic Senate for vote by letter ballot. The text of the resolution of the Conference Committee to be voted upon is as follows:
The President be requested to transmit to the Board of Regents the following resolution, which shall also be issued as public statement:
The Academic Senate, Northern Section, has repeatedly expressed its approval of the University policy which prohibits the employment of persons whose commitments or obligations to any organization, Communist or other, prejudice impartial scholarship and teaching and the free pursuit of truth. But it cannot accept the special oath, and the arbitrary dismissal of loyal members of the faculty for refusal to sign this oath, as proper means of implementing a policy of excluding members of the Communist Party from employment in the University, for the following reasons:
1. The second part of the oath is at once discrimination against the faculty in relation to other public servants and a completely ineffectual method of preventing the penetration of the Communist Party into the faculty.
2. It is unjust and a violation of established principles of academic privilege and tenure to dismiss, and without a hearing, loyal members of the faculty, simply and solely because they refuse to sign the second part of the oath.
Continuation of the present controversy can only have tragic consequences for the welfare of the University. Therefore, in recognition of the Regents' statements of February 24, 1950:
(1) That "any member of the faculty who is or shall become a member of the Communist Party has violated the terms on which he is employed, and is not entitled to tenure, which involves responsibilities as well as privileges, and shall be dismissed, after the facts have been established by the University administration, which shall consult with the Committee on Privilege and Tenure of the Academic Senate, but only as to the adequacy of the evidence of membership in the Communist Party." And,
(2) That "the responsibility for judging members of the faculty is a common concern of the faculty, of the President and of the Regents, in accord with the terms of University Regulation No. 5, promulgated in revised form June 15, 1944. The Regents will, therefore, adhere to their traditional practice of taking no action against any member of the faculty on grounds other than membership in the Communist Party without referring the case through the President to the Committee on Privilege and Tenure of the Academic Senate for full findings and recommendations as in the past."
The Academic Senate, Northern Section, requests that there be substituted for the present oath the following requirements:
1. All members of the Senate will subscribe to the constitutional oath of loyalty sworn by officers of public trust in the State of California, as prescribed in Article XX, Section 3, of the Constitution of the State of California.
2. All future letters of acceptance of salary and position will contain a statement that the person concerned accepts such position subject to the University policies embodied in the Regents' resolutions of October 11, 1940, and June 24, 1949, excluding members of the Communist Party from employment in the University, and in University Regulation 5, endorsed in the Regents' statement of February 24, 1950.
Proposition Number 2. A resolution offered by Professors A. R. Davis, J. D. Hicks and W. M. Stanley at the meeting of March 7, 1950 which the Section directed to be circulated to all of its members for vote by mail ballot, as follows:
No person whose commitments or obligations to any organization, Communist or other, prejudice impartial scholarship and the free pursuit of truth will be employed by the University. Proved members of the Communist Party, by reason of such commitments to that Party, are not acceptable as members of the Faculty.
(Arguments For and Against this Proposition are attached.)
Academic Senate, Northern Section
ARGUMENT FOR PROPOSITION NO. 2
Supporters of this Resolution agree with the following argument stated by Arthur O. Lovejoy, founder and first Secretary of the A.A.U.P., in the American Scholar (p. 332 in the Summer number, 1949):
- Freedom of inquiry, of opinion, and of teaching in universities is a prerequisite, if the academic scholar is to perform the function proper to his profession.
- The Communist Party in the United States is an organization whose aim is to bring about the establishment in this country of a political as well as an economic system essentially similar to that which now exists in the Soviet Union.
- That system does not permit freedom of inquiry, of opinion, and of teaching, either in or outside of universities; in it the political government claims and exercises the right to dictate to scholars what conclusions they must accept, or at least profess to accept, even on questions lying within their own specialties - for example, in philosophy, in history, in aesthetics and literary criticism, in economics, in biology.
- A member of the Communist Party is therefore engaged in a movement which has already extinguished academic freedom in many countries and would - if it were successful here - result in the abolition of such freedom in American universities.
- No one, therefore, who desires to maintain academic freedom in America can consistently favor that movement, or give indirect assistance to it by accepting as fit members of the faculties of universities, persons who have voluntarily adhered to an organization one of whose aims is to abolish academic freedom.
ARGUMENT AGAINST PROPOSITION NO. 2
Recommendation for a "no" vote on this resolution is based (1) on the belief that professional fitness to teach or engage in research should be determined by an objective evaluation of the quality of an individual's mind, character, and loyalty and not by his political or religious beliefs or lawful associations: and (2) on the belief that the proposed resolution, if passed, would contradict the above principle and would put the Senate on record as favoring a political test.
A statement of this same argument against a political test and for academic freedom was made by the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure for 1948 of the American Association of University Professors and published in the "Bulletin" 1949, 35, 1, 56-57. That statement read as follows:
"… .If a teacher, as an individual, should advocate the forcible overthrow of the government or should incite others to do so; if he should use his classes as a forum for communism, or otherwise abuse his relationship with his students for that purpose; if his thinking should show more than normal bias or be so uncritical as to evidence professional unfitness, these are the charges that should be brought against him. If these charges should be established by evidence adduced at a hearing, the teacher should be dismissed because of his acts of disloyalty or because of professional unfitness, and not because he is a Communist. So long as the Communist Party in the United States is a legal party, affiliation with that party in and of itself should not be regarded as a justifiable reason for exclusion from the academic profession."
Courtesy of University Archives, The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-6000; http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/info
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=hb0199p04j&brand=oac4
Title: Memorandum on Proposition 1 and Proposition 2. March 13, 1950
By: Academic Senate, Northern Section, Author
Date: March 13, 1950
Contributing Institution: University Archives, The Bancroft Library, University of California at Berkeley, Berkeley, CA 94720-6000; http://bancroft.berkeley.edu/info
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University of California Regents
The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley, CA 94720