Boy Scouts

For at least a decade, the conservatively inclined undergraduate has been unable to find an organization entirely sympathetic with his own views. Political clubs, while they might be conservative, tend to follow a party line. Now, a new group, expressly calling itself the Harvard Conservative League, has been formed, filling a conspicuous gap in the local intellectual spectrum.

Unfortunately, the League has failed to make a clear statement of its intentions. A new group can not ordinarily be expected to make a policy declaration so early in its life, but now, with reports of diverging interests within the group, the need is vital. Kenneth D. Robertson '29, an outspoken advocate of an organization to ferret out the Communist he thinks the University harbors, has stated that he wants a group of undergraduate "scouts" to report subversive statements made by members of the Faculty and the student body. One of the key students in the formation of the Conservative League last night admitted that he is one of Robertson's "scouts."

An organization such as Robertson envisions, and which a few members of the new Conservative League apparently support, is directly opposed to every concept of academic freedom. A group of so-called "scouts" could enforce a conformity that would stifle all expression of opinion. Writing in 1917, President Lowell condemned such practices in a report that has since become classic;

"The teaching by the professor in his class-room . . . ought to be absolutely free . . . . This is the primary condition of academic freedom, and any violation of it endangers intellectual progress. In order to make it secure it is essential that the teaching in the class-room should be confidential. This does not mean that it is secret, but what is said there should not be published. If the remarks of the instructor were repeated by the pupils in the public press, he would be subjected to constant criticism by people not familiar with the subject, who misunderstood his teaching; and what is more important, he would certainly be misquoted, because his remarks would be reported by the student without their context or without the qualifications that give them accuracy."

There is a great difference, however, between Robertson's junior investigators and an organization that properly represents the conservative mind. Many students who would welcome the chance to join a group such as the Conservative League would be repulsed by every aspect of "scouting' and the intellectual regimentation for which it stands. If the new organization is being set up to stimulate interest and discussion from the conservative point of view, as its leaders say, it should make this perfectly explicit in its future actions.