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"Dewey's letter to the editor in reply was unusually pointed. 'It is doubtless fitting and natural that the New York Times should find university professors "chartered libertines of speech," given to "too much foolish babbling," whenever the results of the investigation of university scholars lead them to question any features of the existing economic order,' he began. The Times was perfectly entitled, in other words, to express opinions flattering to its constituency. But it misunderstood the nature of academic work. 'You apparently take the ground that a modern university is a personally conducted institution like a factory,' Dewey explained,

Wiki Markup_...and that if for any reason the utterances of any teacher, within or without the university walls, are objectionable to the Trustees, there is nothing more to be said. This view virtually makes the Trustees owners of a private undertaking ...._{_}I{_}{_}But\] the modem university is in every respect,_ _save_ _its legal management, a public institution with public responsibilities. \ [Professors\] have been trained to think of the pursuit and expression of truth as a public function to be exercised on behalf of the interests of their moral employer-society as a whole .... They ask for no social immunities or privileges for themselves. They will be content, for their own protection, with any system which protects the relation of the modern university to the public as a whole_

_"_The Dartmouth College case is often cited as the foundation for academic freedom in the United States; but the argument the Supreme Court rejected in that case in 1819 is precisely the argument Dewey and the AAUP advanced, almost a century later, as academic freedom's rationale. The Court took Dartmouth College away from a state legislature and returned it to its 'owners' on the grounds that it was a private corporation immune from public control. In rescuing private colleges from the politicians, the Court effectively turned them over to the trustees. It did not turn them over to the professors. What Dewey and the AAUP accomplished was therefore a rather remarkable end run around Dartmouth C'ollege; they created a nongovernmental organization, the AAUP, that claimed to represent the public interest against the university's own benefactors, and they defined that interest as a need for disinterested scholarship. The deal they offered was that in return for exemption from ordinary market conditions, professors would commit themselves to the unselfish and disinterested pursuit of truth. Implicit in the argument they made was that the public-though supposedly the real 'owners' of universities-would abstain from interference in university affairs out of its own selfinterest. Edward Ross's freedom from Jane Stanford would have been worth nothing, after all, if the voters of California could have fired him instead. And the most.remarkable thing about this deal was that American society-with, to be sure, many reservations and regrets along the way-bought it" (414-417).

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"The deeper issue is the freedom of the teacher to teach his subject according to his most responsible understanding of it, and not according to the ukase of a board of trustees, a legislature, a political party or a foreign country.unmigrated-wiki-markup

"President \ [James B.\] Conant has well said that unmolested inquiry is essential: 'on this point there can be no compromise even in the days of an armed truce \ [sc. the Cold War).' The fight to maintain freedom of discussion, Conant adds, will not be easy. 'Reactionaries are going to use the tensions inherent in our armed truce as an excuse for attacking a wide group of radical ideas and even some which are in the middle of the road' But a free society must dedicate itself to the protection of the unpopular view. 'Those who worry about radicalism in our schools and colleges are often either reactionaries who themselves do not bear allegiance to the traditional American principles or defeatists who despair of the success of our own philosophy in an open competition.' They fail to recognize, Conant observes, 'that diversity of opinion within the framework of loyalty to our free society is not only basic to a university but to the entire nation. For in a democracy without traditions only those reasoned convictions which emerge from 6 diversity of opinion can lead to the unity and national solidarity so essential for the welfare of the country.'

"Conant makes here, I believe, the basic point. Popular ignorance about civil liberties is jeopardizing free discussion for everybody. It is threatening to turn us all into frightened conformists~ and conformity can lead only to stagnation. We need courageous men to help us recapture a sense of the indispensability of dissent, and we need dissent ifwe are to make up our minds equably and intelligently. For freedom of discussion is an organic part of the process by whlch a democracy wins consent for its great decisions. No surgery can amputate it without crippling the system.

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