No CrossRef data available.
Article contents
ACADEMIC FREEDOM IN AMERICA: GILDED AGE BEGINNINGS AND WORLD WAR I LEGACIES
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 27 September 2018
Abstract
The early decades of the twentieth century proved pivotal for defining academic freedom in America. The challenges of World War I ultimately strengthened the use and understanding of the concept specifically for the U.S. context. During the last third of the nineteenth century, a number of developments in higher learning had converged, bringing academic independence urgently to the forefront. Growth and professionalization meant a new role for universities in American society; big-business philanthropy saw sciences flourish, but it also introduced a new market-orientated organization to college administration. Gilded Age and Progressive Era debates over individual rights, social responsibilities, and public and political capital caused much controversy on campuses across the country. German academic institutions, long cherished models in U.S.-reform-rhetoric, had begun to lose their appeal, and by 1914, they were fully discredited. Hence, even before the United States entered into the conflict, World War I forced the academic community to define their position between society, government, and professional ethos. During this process, two very different notions of academic freedom emerged: one favoring individual liberties, the other one prioritizing institutional integrity. These distinctive and potentially adverse interpretations continued to function as the basis for legal and public arguments as the twentieth century progressed.
- Type
- Special Issue: Americans and WWI: 100 Years Later
- Information
- The Journal of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era , Volume 17 , Issue 4 , October 2018 , pp. 691 - 703
- Copyright
- Copyright © Society for Historians of the Gilded Age and Progressive Era 2018
References
NOTES
The author would like to thank Axel Jansen, Manfred Berg, and the anonymous peer reviewers whose helpful comments were much appreciated, as were the remarks by numerous colleagues on an earlier version of this paper at the DGfA history conference at Heidelberg in 2017. Moreover, thank you to Heather Ellis for the opportunity to discuss the broader context of this topic at the History of Education Seminar at Sheffield University in May 2017.
1 Hofstadter, Richard and Metzger, Walter P., The Development of Academic Freedom in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1957), xii and 262–63Google Scholar.
2 Robert A. Nisbet quoted in Kirk, Russell, Academic Freedom. An Essay in Definition (Chicago: Henry Regnery Company, 1955), 2Google Scholar.
3 Herbst, Jurgen, “Akademische Freiheit in den USA. Privileg der Professoren oder Bürgerrecht?” in Wissenschaftsfreiheit in Vergangenheit und Gegenwart, eds. Müller, Rainer Albert and Schwinges, Rainer Christoph (Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2008), 317–29, here 319Google Scholar.
4 More recent works still rely heavily on these publications especially on the Carnegie-funded collaboration by Hofstadter and Metzger, Development of Academic Freedom. See, for example, Finkin, Matthew W. and Post, Robert C., For the Common Good. Principles of American Academic Freedom (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2009)Google Scholar; or Lee, Philip, Academic Freedom at American Universities. Constitutional Rights, Professional Norms, and Contractual Duties (London: Lexington Books, 2015)Google Scholar.
5 Veysey, Lawrence, The Emergence of the American University (Chicago: Chicago University Press, 1965), 252Google Scholar.
6 The founding of professional academic associations like the MLA (1883), the AHA (1884), or the ASSA (1885) can be seen as emblematic for this development.
7 Ash, Mitchell G., Mythos Humboldt (Vienna: Böhlau Verlag, 1999)Google Scholar; Turner, Roy Steven, “Humboldt in North America? Reflections on the Research Univeristy and Its Historians” in Humboldt International. Der Export des Deutschen Universitätsmodells im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert, ed. Christoph, Rainer Schwinges (Basel: Schwabe Verlag, 2001), 289–322Google Scholar; Clark, William, Academic Charisma and the Origins of the Research University (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2008)Google Scholar; Axtell, James, Wisdom's Workshop. The Rise of the Modern University (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
8 Werner, Anja, The Transatlantic World of Higher Education: Americans at German Universities, 1776–1914 (New York: Berghahn Books, 2013), 130Google Scholar.
9 Trommler, Frank, “Introduction” in The German-American Encounter: Conflict and Cooperation between Two Cultures, 1800–2000, eds. Trommler and Shore, Elliott (New York: Berghahn Books, 2001), x–xixGoogle Scholar; Turner, “Humboldt in North America?,” 295. Moreover this transatlantic cultural exchange was certainly not a one-way street. See, e.g., Levine, Emily, “Nützlichkeit, Kultur und die Universität in transatlantischer Perspektive” in Transnationale Universitätsgeschichte, eds. Bungert, Heike and Lerg, Charlotte (Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 2017), 51–81Google Scholar; Rodgers, Daniel T. Atlantic Crossings (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2009)Google Scholar.
10 Ringer, Fritz K., Die Gelehrten. Der Niedergang der deutschen Mandarine 1890–1933 (München: dtv, 1987), 31Google Scholar.
11 Classen, Peter, “Zur Geschichte der, ‘Akademischen Freiheit,’ vornehmlich im Mittelalter” in Historische Zeitschrift 232 (1981), 529–53, here 531–32CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
12 Ringer, Die Gelehrten, 104.
13 Hofstadter and Metzger, Development of Academic Freedom, 387.
14 Ibid., 386.
15 Classen, “Geschichte der ‘Akademischen Freiheit,’” 531–32.
16 On “secularization” of higher education in the United States, see, e.g., Turner, James, Without God, Without Creed. The Origins of Unbelief in America (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1985)Google Scholar; and Marsden, George M., The Soul of the American University. From Protestant Establishment to Established Nonbelief (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994)Google Scholar.
17 Hadley, Arthur T., “Academic Freedom and Theory II” in The Atlantic Monthly 28 (Mar. 1903): 334–44, here 344Google Scholar. Hadley himself does not share this opinion but he discusses the view at some length.
18 von Ungern-Sternberg, Jürgen and von Ungern-Sternberg, Wolfgang, Der Aufruf ‘An die Kulturwelt!’ Das Manifest der 93 und die Anfänge der Kriegspropaganda im Ersten Weltkrieg. (Stuttgart: Steiner Verlag, 1996), 87–88 and 156Google Scholar.
19 For example, Rudolf Eucken and Ernst Haeckel “Germany's Culture. To the Universities of America” in New York Times, Sept. 25, 1914, 10. See also Schmidt-Ott, Friedrich, Erlebtes und Erstrebtes 1860–1950 (Wiesbaden: Steiner Verlag, 1952), 113Google Scholar. For a commentary on key pamphlets, see Böhme, Klaus, “Einleitung” in Aufrufe und Reden deutscher Professoren im Ersten Weltkrieg, ed. Böhme, Klaus (Stuttgart: Reclam, 2014 [1975]), 3–43Google Scholar; Schwabe, Klaus, “Zur politischen Hatung der deutschen Professoren im Ersten Weltkrieg” in Historische Zeitschrift 192:3 (1961): 601–34Google Scholar.
20 Albion Small, “American Intelligence” in Chicago Tribune, Jan. 10, 1915, II:5.
21 “The War of the University Professors” in New York World, Sep. 24, 1914, n.p.
22 Nagler, Jörg, “From Culture to Kultur” in Transatlantic Images and Perceptions. Germany and America since 1776, eds. Barclay, David E. and Glaser-Schmidt, Elisabeth (New York: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 131–54CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
23 Robert Herrick, “Why Bother about Culture?” in Chicago Sunday Tribune, Dec. 27, 1914, II:5. Regarding the generational dimension in this change of American attitudes, Henry May's analysis remains a classic: May, Henry F., The End of American Innocence (New York: Columbia University Press, 1959)Google Scholar. On the changing attitudes toward German Kultur and Wissenschaft, see Trommler, Frank, “Negotiating German ‘Kultur'and ‘Wissenschaft’ in American Intellectual Life, 1870–1918” in New Perspectives on German-American Educational History. Topics, Trends, Fields of Research, eds. Overhoff, Jürgen and Overbeck, Anne (Kempten: Klinkhardt Verlag, 2017), 83–103Google Scholar.
24 Lovejoy quoted in Tiede, Hans-Joerg, University Reform. The Founding of the American Association of University Professors (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 151Google Scholar.
25 Paulsen, Friedrich, The German Universities (New York: Charles Scribner's Sons, 1906), 255Google Scholar.
26 The transatlantic (mis-)understanding of the Arons case would deserve a more detailed examination. In Germany the issue was decidedly not one of personal academic freedom but rather one of administrative autonomy. Arons did not lose a chair or a professorship but his status as Privatdozent, which was a privilege to teach traditionally granted by the discretion of the university alone. The Privatdozent, therefore, was not a state employee but academics with socialist sympathies (or from a Jewish background) had particularly benefited from this as they were barred from state service in Wilhelmine Germany. Few American observers grasped the intricate complexities of the case. For them Leo Arons had lost his job because he was a socialist. Interestingly, the fact that he was Jewish (which had indirectly also featured in Germany) was rarely mentioned in the United States where anti-Semitism was also quite prevalent in higher education. On the Arons case, see, e.g., Rebenich, Stefan, Theodor Mommsen und Adolf Harnack. Wissenschaft und Politik im Berlin des ausgehenden 19. Jahrhunderts. (Berlin: deGruyter, 1997), 471Google Scholar; Ringer, Die Gelehrten, 132. On anti-Semitism in U.S. higher education, see, e.g., Karabel, Jerome, The Chosen (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2005)Google Scholar.
27 Lovejoy quoted in Schaffer, Ronald, America in the Great War. The Rise of the War Welfare State (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1991), 127Google Scholar. See also Blakey, George T., Historians on the Homefront. American Propagandists for the Great War (Lexington: University of Kentucky Press, 1970), 4Google Scholar.
28 Nelson, Cary, No University Is an Island. Saving Academic Freedom (New York: New York University Press, 2010)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
29 Lee, Academic Freedom, 1–3.
30 Ibid., 20
31 Tiede, University Reform, 94.
32 Ibid.
33 “General Report of the Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure” in The Bulletin of the AAUP 1 (1915), 20–43Google Scholar.
34 Ibid., 20.
35 Gruber, Mars and Minerva, 16.
36 Ibid., 15.
37 Parker, Alton, “The Rights of Donors” in Educational Review 16:21 (1902)Google Scholar quoted in Finkin and Post, For the Common Good, 25; “Shall Professors Have Free Speech. Or Are They to Mirror the Views of University Trustees?” in New York Tribune, June 27, 1915, III:2.
38 Veysey, American University, 317–18.
39 Butler quoted in “Academic Freedom at Harvard,” in School and Society 7 (160): 83Google Scholar.
40 Ibid.
41 Schaffer, America in the Great War, 128.
42 Tiede, University Reform, 155.
43 Schaffer, America in the Great War, 145.
44 Tiede, University Reform, 152.
45 Ibid., 153–56.
46 “Report of the Committee on Academic Freedom in Wartime” [dated Dec. 24, 1917] in The Bulletin of the AAUP 4 (1918), 29–47, here 29Google Scholar.
47 Ibid., 34–42.
48 Ibid., 33.
49 Ibid., 39.
50 Woodrow Wilson, Message to Congress, Aug. 19, 1914, 63. Congress, Session II. No. 566 Congressional Records (1914), 3.
51 Lerg, Charlotte A., “Off Campus. German Propaganda Professors in America 1914–1917” in The Academic World in the Era of the Great War, eds. Marie-Eve Chagnon and Tomás Irish (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2017), 21–41, here 33–35Google Scholar.
52 Lowell to C. N. Chaffee, Sept. 9, 1914, box 64, folder 231, Records of the President of Harvard University, Abbott Lawrence Lowell UAI 5.160, Harvard University Archives.
53 Lowell to Richard H. Dana III, 08.03.1916, box 64, folder 321a, Records of the President.
54 Lawrence Lowell, Annual Report 1916–1917, Reports of the President and Treasurer of Harvard College [digital] http://hul.harvard.edu/lib/archives/refshelf/AnnualReportsSearch.htm (accessed Aug. 12, 2017). Comments appeared, for example, in The New Republic, The New York Times, the Atlantic Monthly, and School and Society.
55 Lowell, Annual Report 1916–1917, 20.
56 Ibid., 19.
57 Meiklejohn, Alexander, “Freedom of the College” in Atlantic Monthly 71 (1918), 83–89Google Scholar.
58 Lowell, Annual Report 1916–917, 18.
59 James Melvin Lee, president of the American Association of Teachers of Journalism to Lowell, Feb. 25, 1918, box 27, folder 1803: Academic Freedom, Records of the President.
60 Lowell also suggested that the university was obligated to ensure that students’ “social sensibilities” were not offended. In 1917, when campus populations were still rather homogeneous, this issue merited little more than a paragraph in Lowell's definition, but today's debates over trigger warnings and safes spaces have rendered this caveat strangely current. Lowell, Annual Report 1916–1917, 19. On the current debate, see e.g., Slate, Tom, ed., Unsafe Space. The Crisis of Free Speech on Campus (London: Palgrave Macmillan, 2016)CrossRefGoogle Scholar.
61 Bok, Derek, Universities in the Marketplace (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2003)Google Scholar; Slaughter, Shila and Rhoades, Gary, Academic Capitalism and the New Economy. Markets, State, and Higher Education (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2004)Google Scholar.
62 III, Teichgraeber, Richard, F., “What Set Veblen Apart? Why Read Veblen Today?” in Thorstein Veblen. The Higher Learning in America, ed. Teichgraeber (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2015), 21–29, here 23Google Scholar.