NEGLECT OF PRINCIPLE

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

When I was at the Harvard Law School over forty years ago, one of our professors, a brilliant and accomplished law teacher, resigned under pressure from the University authorities because he had failed to live up to the high ethical standards then demanded of Harvard teachers. What he had done was to make speeches throughout the Commonwealth in favor of the railroad side of a controversy, failing to reveal to the public that a railroad was paying him for making those speeches. There was no evidence that he had said anything that he did not believe or in any way misrepresented the law or the facts. His fault was in concealing his employment, thereby leading the public to believe that he was speaking as a professor and a citizen and not as an advocate for pay.

The University's point was that its faculty should not include any person who did not live up to the highest moral and ethical standards. Harvard was regarded as a place where young men were taught to be gentlemen as well as scholars and professional exports. It was inconceivable that a man capable of deceit could remain on the teaching staff.

The neglect of this principle has led to the appointment of Dr. Oppenheimer to give the William James lectures. Dr. Oppenheimer is a confessed liar; he has admitted that he told a whole tissue of lies in a field in which the lives and safety of us all were concerned. He has violated the code of the gentleman and of the truth-seeking scholar. He has not repented. His ethical perceptions are not sensitive. He does not recognize the enormity of the thing that he did. The University has violated sound principles in giving him the cloak of its prestige. Robert H. Montgomery, LL.B. '12