THE COLLEGE TEACHER IN POLITICS

The Editor of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE has requested me to write for publication a statement of my opinion as to the rights and duties of the college teacher in politics. I emphasize the fact that this statement has been prepared by request, because I wish definitely to disavow any special claim to offer my opinion in the matter, and at the same time to disclaim any intention to impose my opinion upon alumni of Dartmouth College or other readers of the ALUMNI MAGAZINE.

My opinion as to the rights and duties of the college teacher in politics can be expressed very briefly and concisely: College teachers may and should take part in politics in the same ways and at least to the same extent as citizens of any other class.

Before passing to the positive argument on the question, I should like to note that so far as I have been able to learn, the administrative policy of American universities and colleges seems everywhere to be in accord with the. view I have expressed. Professor Seligman, head of the Department of Economics of Columbia University for twenty-six years played a prominent part in the deliberations of the recent Progressive Party Convention of New York State. Professor Kirchwey, formerly Dean of Columbia University Law School, and Dean Lewis, of the University of Pennsylvania Law School, were active in the framing of the Progressive platform at Chicago. Professor Hart, of Harvard, a delegate to two national conventions and the candidate of his party for the office of state senator, has spoken for his party in many States in the campaign now pending. Professor Davenport, of Hamilton College, has been a delegate to several state conventions, a state senator in New York, and a speaker in more than one campaign. Professor Worthen of our own College has served his town in the state legislature and has presided over a state convention of his party. Professors Dixon and Laycock were active in organization in the "Lincoln-Republican" movement in New Hampshire in 1906. Doctor Gile, of the Dartmouth Medical faculty, has been a member of the Governor's Council, permanent chairman of a state party convention, and a local political leader. President Nicholas Murray Butler, of Columbia University, presiding officer at the New York State Republican Convention, has never denied the large part credited to him in framing the so-called "Barnes Platform."

Other instances might be offered, but there is no need to multiply them. I do not myself attach any great importance to the argument from authority in this matter. It might well be that the prevalent administrative policy of our colleges is a mistaken one; or, if the matter be one of degree, that the colleges have gone too far. But the fact that the college teacher's right to take part in the active political work of his time seems everywhere to be admitted may perhaps raise a presumption that the opinion I have expressed in the matter is on the side of common sense, the sensus communis of our time.

Before attempting to offer the arguments which seem to me conclusively to establish the right and duty of the college teacher to share fully in the politics of his day, I may perhaps properly dispose briefly of the arguments most commonly urged in favor of limiting or restraining such rights and duties. I may thus in- a measure disarm the criticism that I have thought only "of one side," or that I have not really understood the objections that may be made against my position.

The argument most frequently offered is that the college teacher's contract calls for teaching, and that he can- not fulfill his contract fairly and fully if he allows his political work of any character to disturb or disarrange or lessen his teaching service. To this there seem to me to be several sufficient answers. First of all, there is much that the college teacher can do without subtracting an hour from the time demanded by the most rigid interpretation of his contract, if that contract be fairly construed. But in my judgment the right and duty of the college teacher goes even further than this. Within limits which I would not presume to define, limits to be drawn by the college teacher, subject to the fair criticism of his community and his trustees, I believe that the interests of college and teacher are alike served by a more generous interpretation of the teacher's contract of service.

It is true that the subtraction from his teaching time, or the disarrangement of the college curriculum may represent a loss that is measurable and obvious, while the compensating gains are less obvious and hence less calculable. But it is equally true that the gains from the regular employment of children in manufacture are obvious and measurable, while the social loss can be seen and estimated only by reason's eye; yet I believe that few will deny the over-balancing loss. And I take it that colleges are institutions in which trained men of vision are to train their charges to weigh the greater unseen loss or gain against the grosser gain or loss. To the gains in the case of the college teacher in politics I shall later return.

More subtle and fascinating is the argument that the college teacher occupies toward facts and principles the position of a judge and expositor, rather than that of an advocate. This argument seems to me to have considerable merit. That the judicial habit of mind is a desideratum in the researcher and even in the teacher seems to me to go without saying.

But to judge is to form a judgment. The advocacy of the judgment brings the sanity of the judgment to an invaluable test. Rarely can a teacher do his best work who cannot or will not give judgment on the data he presents to his class. Students are rightly impatient of the man who always leaves to them the task of giving judgment. Where differences of opinion exist, the teacher should temperately and candidly state those opinions; but he may rightfully be challenged for his own.

Does advocacy blunt the keen sense of fairness necessary to the judge? I think it may, and, if there were no other consideration involved, I would agree that the teacher should eschew advocacy and confine himself to exposition. But there are other considerations that seem to me far more weighty.

First of all, it has not been my fortune to know a college teacher who does not advocate his opinions. If college teachers were forbidden all advocacy, college teachers would soon be like snakes in Ireland. And I do not believe that opinions are held more tenaciously or obstinately because they have been avowed or advocated from a rostrum rather than in the group conversation of friends. Indeed, I suspect that to a man of docile disposition the challenge of an audience works rather to moderation and judicial restraint in manner and in utterance, as I feel certain it does as to statements of fact. This thought would well bear the expansion and development which I must here leave to the reader.

A variant of this last argument would permit the advocacy of political opinions by college teachers in so far as those opinions are not within the province of the teacher's college work. Thus a teacher of mathematics or of physics could take 'the stump in defence of freetrade or protectionism, while an economist would by the same act dull his fine discrimination in passing judgment upon the accumulating evidence on the tariff question. The political scientist would in like manner be injured by public advocacy of constitutional reform or changes in our political structure, while the chemist could without impropriety plead before the voter for the preservation of our constitution and other political institutions. I have not time to answer this form of argument.

A third argument for restricting the general political rights of the college teacher is found in the fear that he may make enmities outside the college community which may directly lessen the number of students or the endowments cr appropriations of the college. This argument will have for different persons a weight nicely proportioned to their fear and faith; and perhaps fear and faith, like taste, are not matters of argument. For myself I can only avow my faith in men and in the "power not ourselves that makes for righteousness,"—a faith that no college can take permanent harm in its constituency or its funds from the complete political enfranchisement of its teachers. That my faith is not without substance seems to me to be attested by the experience of Harvard University and Dartmouth College. We must not forget that approval is often silent, while disapproval is usually clamant and loud voiced.

A fourth argument, while conceding to the teacher the rights of voting, of public advocacy of his political opinions, even perhaps of office-holding, would deny him the right of sharing in what is called "organization work." The general disrepute,—I think that it is largely deserved,—in which "organization work" is held would seem at first to give force to this argument. But is it not rather, on second thought, an additional argument not merely for the right but for the duty of the college teacher, wherever and whenever possible, to do such "work." If such "work" has "power to drag him down," God pity him, but let him go his way outside college halls. If he has power and opportunity to improve the current methods, directly or indirectly through the secrets he there masters, he confers incalculable benefit upon himself, his college, and the nation.

I am aware that I have not stated the case against my position completely or in all its specifications. Space forbids. On the other hand, I must also omit many and cogent considerations which I could fairly urge in support of my contention. But I must not omit what seems to me the really dominant consideration,—the effect of the college's attitude and of the teacher's attitude in this matter upon the general tone of the college and its teaching. Denial or restriction of complete political rights, if known, would add seriously to the handicap under which most college teachers do their work. We are "closet philosophers"; let us admit it, even boast of it, —provided we are something more than closet philosophers. Philosophy in these pragmatic days should not shun alliance with facts and human strivings. I confess that I am quite impatient with the widely-held idea that we are all right in theory, but that our theories won't work. I have been taught, and I believe that no theory is "all right" unless it fits or frames the facts. I believe that, generally speaking the so-called theorist already has a wider knowledge of facts than does the so-called practical man. But the theorist's "wider" acquaintance with facts, or his acquaintance with a wider range of facts, brings the danger that he may not come closely to grips with his facts. He sees so much that he cannot see the limits and barriers of his practical neighbor's vision. The practical man and the theorist can teach each other. And perhaps even more important is the need of a mutual tolerance, and even cooperation in achievement, greater than we have known in the past.

If the presence of the college teacher in politics makes for the greater stature and virility of the man inside the teacher, the college could hardly pay too high a price for the result.

The world today holds very generally to the view that the college teacher is not quite a man. This view seems to me in large measure undeserved; but there have been,—there still are,—many forces working toward the emasculation and dehumanizing of the teacher. Against these forces a college administration should be keen to set in operation available counteracting forces. Even though few teachers in any faculty should take active and public part in politics, those few men might well change the whole attitude of campus and the outer world toward the teaching body, and might lighten the task and cheer the classroom of every member of the teaching staff. I hope that no college will deliberately add to the emasculating forces any restraint upon the political life of its teachers that would even seem to justify the taunt that we are political eunuchs—chattering but harmless and impotent guardians of the nation's harem of youth.

I have had to write this very hurriedly. I fear that I am dogmatic or doctrinaire or metaphysical, as most advocates are now and again declared to be. May I enter a final caveat? If I have written too abstractly, too generally, is it not fair and "practical" to retort that there is little danger that my reasoning will ever be pressed to embarrassing extremes? Is there likely to be any such general exodus from classroom to convention or legislature, to hustings or "headquarters," as would put an end to the "regular" college work?