The Sacred Fetish of Academic Freedom

One of the most fruitful theories which the early Ionians contributed to western culture is the concept of limitations. This notion through more than 26 centuries has enabled men to see form, shape and size, kind, species and definition in what would otherwise be a formless, shapeless, and very confusing universe. Where man outside this tradition has taken refuge in the unstable putty of mysticism, western man found in this concept a tape measure which would assist him in plotting the size of material things and delineating the character of spiritual reality. The essentials of this theory lie in the dual principles of form and matter. Each is complementary to the other and each exercises a limiting control which contributes to the individuality of the objectively finished product or the subjectively understood thing.

To illustrate by a pedestrian example: On the one hand, a block of marble, which for our purposes may be considered as the principle of matter, will limit by its size and shape the eventual form which the sculptor's intention, which again for our purposes may be called the form, will in turn, determine whether this block of marble becomes a statue of Ulysses S. Grant or Robert E. Lee - a trenchant difference which the southerners in our audience will appreciate. Hence, every individual thing that exists contains somewhere in its make-up the delineating polarity of matter and form, and, as a corollary, it should be added that nothing exists nor can be understood in created nature without the assistance of these patterning principles.

In the educational world today, we are witnessing the foolhardy attempt either to bring into being or to understand a thing which has neither form nor matter, is subject to no standard or norm, has neither limitation nor definition. The sacred fetish of academic freedom. This is the soft under belly of our American way of life, and the sooner it is armor-plated by some sensible limitation the sooner will the future of this Nation be secured from fatal consequences. Two test questions, which imply limitation, come to mind at once when the matter of academic freedom is discussed. The first: is the matter being taught true or false? and the second: if it is false, and presented as such, may one prudently suppose that a good and not an evil end will eventuate from its exposition? The true and the good, then, are the natural limitations of freedom. This is not an area for opinion because opinion does not delineate, for by its very nature it packages the false with the true. Nor is this a matter for experimentation because the prudent man does not experiment with suicide.

These reflections should be of vital concern to the audience present. The majority here are not professional educators. Nevertheless, education controls your way of life not only as to what you shall think, but how you will be taxed. The formidable blind spot in big industry down to the average business and professional man is the failure to recognize the potent control which education exercises over the national life. For the past few years columnists and comedians have been poking fun at the college professors in Government. Despite this harmless barb, these professors and college-trained men, the products of a disastrous and illdefined academic freedom, have taken over the State Department, the Judiciary, the Budget, the myriad agencies of the Government, and have transformed our ways of thinking and living and acting beyond recognition to what they were several decades ago. Instead of reexamining the system of education which produced these men otherwise responsible citizens have futilely hurled criticism against the men themselves, and in some notable instances have continued handsomely to support the schools which produced them. Business and professional men alike have failed to understand that without a knowledge and love of God, man cannot understand the American Constitution or the Bill of Rights; without a knowledge of and belief in the principles of morality, he cannot administer Justice or fashion an honorable treaty with a foreign nation, or even draw up a budget with any semblance of fair play to the economic interests of the various categories of our citizens.

If the United States is to continue in the western tradition which made it great, it behooves those of our citizens interested in the present and future of this Nation to search out and support the educational institutions which are still striving to maintain that tradition; a tradition which was grounded on freedom limited by a belief in God, by faith in the omnipotence of truth and the beneficence of justice. In a word, a tradition that freedom springs from truth, but that truth is rarely freedom's offspring.

Georgetown University today, more consciously than ever before, stands for these principles. It welcomes those who still believe in them to rally to her support.