The University in Ruins

The Islamic University of Gaza at present.

We return to David P. Barrows to follow his career as he rises to the heights of academic prominence and power. For seven years he stumped the state of California, proclaiming the destiny of the Stars and Stripes to float from the North Pole to the South. The world was to be divided up, it was our business to get our share; we should win because we were better organized, more efficient; the world would not tolerate small nations; strong men must rule. And presently came a chance for strong men to rule in Mexico; but the strong men had at their head a weakling by the name of Woodrow Wilson, who refused to act. You might think there would be some impropriety, some violation of military precedence, in a university dean’s attacking a former university president, who had become President of the United States; but when Woodrow Wilson took Vera Cruz, and then refused to take the rest of Mexico, Dean Barrows rushed to the front, denouncing him before chambers of commerce, and being reported in the interlocking newspapers. 

We shall note in the course of this book many cases of college professors forbidden to take part in “outside activities,” and especially to get themselves into the newspapers. The professor’s place is the classroom, we are told; and to this there is only one exception—when the professor is advocating more loot for the exploiters who pay him his salary. Shortly after this Vera Cruz affair the San Francisco “Star” published some revelations concerning our imperialist dean, stating that at the very time he was campaigning for intervention, he was vice-president of the Vera Cruz Land & Cattle Company. A friend who knows Dean Barrows well, defended him to me by the statement that his holdings in this company were not valuable. When I asked how valuable they might have become if the United States had conquered Mexico, my friend changed the subject. 

Upton Sinclair, The Goose-Step: A Study of American Education (1923) 

It is, indeed, a safe generalization that in point of fact the average of university presidents fall short of the average of their academic staff in scholarly or scientific attainments, even when all persons employed as instructors are counted as members of the staff. It may also be remarked by the way that when, as may happen, a scholar or scientist takes office as directive head of a university, he is commonly lost to the republic of learning; he has in effect passed from the ranks of learning to those of business enterprise. 

Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning In America: A Memorandum On the Conduct of Universities By Business Men (1918) 

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Al-Azhar University of Gaza at present.

One other thing, when I was on the board of regents, a General Dynamics [Corporation] president—General Dynamics was the big airplane manufacturer in the San Diego area—came to the board of regents and said, "We've got this great company. We need all these Ph.D.s, and we can't get them. They won't come to San Diego, because there's no university affiliate for them to be close to." And he said, "It's shocking. Here's a great guy that we need, and we're offering him all kinds of money. He's saying, no, he wants to be close to a university affiliate." So he petitioned the regents to change the oceanography thing down there in San Diego... to a campus of the University of California, and if we would do that, they—General Dynamics—would contribute a million dollars. Well, now a million dollars isn't... And we accepted it. We opened the University of California, San Diego, on his petition and his gift of a million dollars. 

Oral History Interview with Cyril C. Nigg, Regent, University of California, 1955-1957 (California State Archives State Government Oral History Program, 1993). 

Academic people approve of critical and dispassionate inquiry, yet at the same time they carry placards and write letters to editors. Scholars are content to work quietly when they believe sound judgment is operating and can operate, but they cannot remain silent when they believe that those in authority have ignored important information or forsaken sound judgment on matters of national importance. 

It was such a moment of frustration last June 11 that the New Haven Committee on the Middle East Crisis first met and began its efforts. We were alarmed that the American public and its political leaders seemed oblivious to the complexity of the Middle East situation and ready to sacrifice the destinies of other peoples as well as our own in a total and uncritical identification of America with the nation which took the offensive in the June War. 

Michael C. Hudson and Willard G. Oxtoby, America and the Middle East: Report of a Conference Held at Yale University November 3, 1967 (New Haven: New Haven Committee on the Middle East Crisis, March 1968).