Читать книгу The Goose-step: A Study of American Education онлайн

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He rules the university as an absolute autocrat; he permits no slightest interference with his will. He furiously attacks or cunningly intrigues against anyone who shows any trace of interference, nor does he rest until he has disgraced the man and driven him from the university. His “Faculty Council” is a farce, because it has only advisory powers, and he overrides it when he sees fit. He makes promises to his faculty, to allow them this and that and the other kind of freedom and authority, but when the time for action comes he does exactly what he pleases.

One of his favorite devices is to use the trustees as a club over the heads of his faculty. Whatever is done, it is the trustees who have done it; but no one ever knows what Butler has said to the trustees, or what he has advised them to do. No member of the faculty has a seat on the board, or ever gets near the board except he is summoned to be browbeaten for his opinions. Says Professor Joel E. Spingarn, in a pamphlet on this subject: