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

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It would be disheartening to a proud son of Columbia to linger over all the details of official trickery and deception, of threat and insult, of manners even worse than morals; but it would be unjust to those who love Columbia’s honor to hide from them the fact that, in the course of this single incident, the president of their alma mater told at least five deliberate falsehoods, broke at least three deliberate promises, and denied his own statements whenever it served his purpose to do so. It is without rancor, and with deep regret, that Professor Spingarn feels obliged to state these facts, and to express his mature conviction that the word or promise of President Butler is absolutely worthless unless it is recorded in writing and that even a written document offers no certain safeguard against evasion or distortion. It is to this executive, with this code of honor, that Columbia entrusts all avenues of communication between the subservient faculties and the governing trustees.

This is not a history or an estimate of President Butler’s administration of Columbia; it is merely the record of a single abuse. But the record would be incomplete if it were not clearly made known that the facts, so far from being exceptional, are typical of his executive career. It is not merely that Columbia’s greatest teachers, poets, musicians, have been lost to the university from the very outset as a result of his methods and his policies. The real scandal is worse than this. It is that in the conduct of its affairs a great university, so far from being above the commercialism of its industrial environment, actually employs methods that would be spurned in the humblest of business undertakings. Even the decencies of ordinary business are not always observed; and the poor scholar, unfamiliar with methods such as these, falls an easy prey. No device, however unworthy, is regarded as forbidden by custom or by honor. A professor may be asked to send in a purely formal resignation as a compliment to the prospective new head of his department, and then be dumbfounded to have his letter acted upon by the president immediately upon its receipt, and before the new head is actually appointed. A professor may be induced to come to Columbia by the assurance of the president that the usual contract, “for three years or during the pleasure of the trustees,” involves an actual obligation for three years on the part of the university, while another professor holding the same contract with the university may find his chair abolished, on the recommendation of the president, at the end of two years. These are actual cases.