Case for the Pro's

The University of Washington has been in commons and bitter uproar for two months over the ban on talks by Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer and the subsequent cancelling of two lectures and two scientific conferences. The faculty senate has condemned President Henry Schmitz' veto of lectures by the atomic scientist, students have petitioned, and Schmitz himself has refused to discuss his reasons for the ban. Efforts by some members of the faculty to find a compromise have now partially succeeded--with a two-sided statement expressing faith in the president as a supporter of academic freedom and disagreement with the decision in the Oppenheimer case. Still, the real question involved in the controversy--who in the university will finally choose guest speakers--has not yet been answered.

Perry Miller, professor of American Literature, has just returned from Seattle, but he is not predicting any final answers. After talking informally with professors at the Seattle institution, Miller concludes that the vote of censure "amounts to a considerable victory over President Schmitz." But he points out that despite a banner headline in the Hearst Seattle Post-Intelligencer--"UW Faculty Senate Acts to End Controversy on Oppenheimer"--the debate is far from finished. Although the resolution in the faculty senate expressed faith in Schmitz, it also in effect warned him he could not again overrule faculty decisions so blatantly.

Miller was in Seattle when the Senate censured the president on April 7, and he reports that professors who were fighting Schmitz were jubilant over their victory. An interesting sidelight on the voting is that the 56 members of the senate who condemned Schmitz were largely from the sciences and the humanities, while the 40 who supported the president's ban on Oppenheimer were generally members of the faculties of engineering, education, forestry, and law.

It is not difficult to see why many professors of law supported Schmitz, for Alfred J. Schweppe, former dean of Washington's law school and now president of the state bar association, had already led the way. Supporting Schmitz' "sound discretion" not to appoint Oppenheimer, Schweppe wrote: "There are brilliant men in the penitentiaries, yet I venture to say that not many of Dr. Schmitz' critics would advocate their being selected ..." He concluded that he was "pretty much fed up with illogical antics of some of the Harvard, Yale and other professors."

Seattle Paper Supports Schweppe

Fully agreeing with Schweppe, the Post-Intelligencer considered the boycott over academic freedom a "phony issue." The paper editorialized: "Presumably we should don sack-cloth and strew ashes over our uncultured heads for the "egregiousinsult' tendered Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer when that eminent scientist was rejected as a visiting lecturer. But we ain't agonna." The paper continued that "the notion that 'academic freedom' is involved ... is emotional and juvenile balderdash."

Clearly, despite the rantings of the Hearst paper or the former law dean, a basic issue was at stake. President Schmitz' decision to turn down a request from his own physics department was the first time in the university's history that a president had vetoed a speaker named by a special faculty committee. Actually, the resolution of the faculty senate and the later statement by Schmitz himself ignore any specific mention of how visiting lecturers will be chosen in the future. Nevertheless, the faculty made clear their intention of having the deciding voice: "We have been assured," the senate resolved, "that the faculty be given an opportunity to participate fully in the discussion of university policies." The senate also agreed to find "new methods for considering appointments ..."

President Schmitz has evidently surrendered about as much as he can without resigning altogether. "Whatever breakdowns there have been in internal communication," he stated, "have been neither planned nor intentional. Any steps that can taken to develop and maintain adequate two-way communication between the faculty and the administration should be implemented."

As a result of the partial capitulation of Schmitz, scholars in other universities must now decide whether to continue their boycott of the University of Washington. Regardless of individual decisions, those who were the first to make the boycott drove their point all the way to the president's office. Their Schmitz finally seems to have realized that the choice of a speaker is a professional problem better left to the pro's.