Saius Popuil Suprema Lex

(Ed. Note--The Crimson does not necessarily endorse opinions expressed in printed communications. No attention will be paid to anonymous letters and only under special conditions, at the request of the writer will names be withheld.)

To the Editor of the CRIMSON:

Your point of view on the recent dismissal of Dr. Johnson from the faculty of City College has aroused certain doubts in my mind. You seem to feel that the principle of academic freedom has been violated and that civic liberties have been attacked. It seems to me that you fail to take into consideration certain fundamental factors in the situation.

First, in the matter of academic freedom, one must bear in mind that the City College is partly supported by the New York City government. The city's main aim in the welfare of its citizens, and it believes that such welfare is promoted by the presence of college educated men. If the City College instead of turning out useful people and good citizens becomes a center for seditious and turbulent individuals, the city authorities and taxpayers may be justified in viewing the situation with disapproval. To be sure, the professors and students should be at liberty to think what they like. There is nothing legally or morally wrong in believing that a change in the social order is desirable and necessary. The so-called liberal club at City College was not a fact-finding organization seeking after the truth. It was connected in various ways with the Communist party, a party which believes that the time will soon be ripe to destroy by violence all existing political institutions in order to make way for a new and better world. The existing governments, including the government of the City of New York, can hardly be expected to look forward to their own violent destruction with equanimity.

Dr. Johnson was appointed to teach English and was paid with funds which came indirectly from the city treasury. While so employed, he found time to take a leading part in a communist club. When he spoke on political subjects his words were not the words of a scholar; they were the opinions of an ordinary layman. Academic sanctity no longer protected him. If he, as a layman, conducted himself in such a way as to increase influences which the authorities considered undesirable from the point of view of the general welfare of the college, of the city, and of society as a whole, then they had a perfect right to dismiss him.

The dismissal resulted in active protests on the parts of the students. Certain students were suspended as result of a disturbance in front of a police court. In considering the case we must remember that a college is not a body politic. The citizen enjoys rights which the student does not enjoy. One of those in the right of controlling those in authority. But the protests of the students in this case were designed to coerce the authorities rather than to convince them. Instead of approaching the faculty with persuasion and reasoning the students resorted to breaches of the peace and threatened to strike. In the eyes of the authorities they could not have appeared to be scholastically detached men trying to show the unfairness of the dismissal; they must rather have appeared to be a noisy and disorderly minority attempting to force its will on those in charge. Whatever force their case may have had they soon destroyed by their methods of protest. Civil liberty is no excuse for general disorderliness.

The real mistake here was not in dealing firmly with Dr. Johnson and his followers. The authorities failed only when they neglected to make the public realize the difference between academic freedom and corruption of public education by influences subversive to law and order. Charles Cherington '35.