The loyalty oath and KU
Professor Gerald A. Ehrenreich is playing with fire as he challenges the Kansas loyalty oath in court. He is trying to get a reasoned judgment in an area still swamped with emotion. We support Ehrenreich; the point he is making is an important one—it should be considered seriously.
Every state employee in Kansas, including the faculty members of all state-supported schools and universities, must sign the loyalty oath as a prerequisite to employment. In the oath, the individual swears that he does not advocate and is not a member of an organization that advocates the overthrow of the United States government by force and that, while employed by the state, he will not advocate or join a group that advocates the government's forceful overthrow.
Ehrenreich, supported by the American Civil Liberties Union, has challenged the constitutionality of the oath in district court.
WE CAN UNDERSTAND the state's exacting such an oath from those of its employees whose confidence in the United States government is important in the carrying out of their jobs. But we cannot accept the notion that university professors must be required to sign the oath before they can be hired. This goes against the current of academic freedom; it is a form of control of thought, although granted a relatively minor form in most cases. The very existence of the oath is a reflection on the scholar's commission to think for himself.
In theory at least, it is the scholar's responsibility to pursue truth wherever it is to be found and to try to transmit his ideas of truth to society. His job is to search. It is important that he be able to follow ideas down whatever path they may lead him—not only for his own satisfaction, but also for the protection of free men. A scholar's ideas may lead him to oppose the government of the United States and perhaps even to advocate its forceable overthrow; but that is the scholar's right, that is his responsibility—to seek and report truth as he sees it, to warn the public and enlighten the public so that the public might make its own informed decisions.
WE BELIEVE there is nothing objectionable in the actual wording of the oath. What is objectionable is the fact that the oath exists as a prerequisite to employment at universities in Kansas. Informed citizens certainly want to protect the American form of government; but an attempt to silence university professors endangers our governmental form more than it protects it. Men have the ability to think and choose for themselves; they should be able to listen to opponents of the government and decide for themselves how valuable their ideas are. Certainly it is not the role of the university to silence such critics.
A STAND AGAINST the oath invites criticism from those persons who are convinced that there are Communists hiding in their closets, who feel that American adults should be protected from "controversial" and "damaging" thoughts lest those thoughts disturb their tranquility. But such persons ignore two important points:
- A person who refuses to sign the oath is not necessarily a Communist. He may agree with every idea in the oath, but refuse to sign it on purely moral grounds. It's not necessarily that he's against the government or advocates its overthrow—it's that he reserves the right to make up his own mind and not have it made up for him before he enters the university.
- The search for truth is just that—a search. There is not just one person searching; there are many. Their ideas are varied; they are individuals; each has his own vision of truth. The chorus of their voices, even with the oath, is varied. The elimination of the oath certainly wouldn't change the complexion of things very much. Some of the critics might become more outspoken, but there are still voices on the other side to balance theirs. The ultimate decision still lies with each individual.
Ours is a government which believes in the rights of men to choose for themselves. By blotting out the right of extreme dissent at Kansas universities, we are in effect denying the fact that adults here are intelligent enough to make up their own minds. We are not completely endorsing our governmental form by choice—part of that endorsement is forced upon us through a form of censorship.
A stand in favor of Professor Ehrenreich is not necessarily a popular one, but we feel it is a necessary one. We endorse—as does the Constitution—the rights of men to dissent. And, as did the writers of the Constitution, we believe in the ability of the individual to sift through the mass of voices and make his own decisions in a mature manner.
— Eric Morgenthaler
The Ghost at KU
Unasked question
(The following is reprinted from the Daily Texan, student newspaper at the University of Texas.)
The American Riffleman's Magazine, published by the good ole National Rifle Association, has been asking The Daily Texan for information about the Tower tragedy last Aug. 1.
Its editors want to know who were the civilians and students who brought their own firearms to shoot at Charles Whitman. The questions they want answers for really concern the public's interest. Have these persons had training from the National Rifle Association? And are they members of the NRA?
While it is concerned with its own image, NRA might also have requested whether or not these persons who fired guns Aug. 1 favor gun control laws.
Commager on 'subversion in teaching'
(Editors' note: The following is an excerpt from an article by Henry Steele Commager entitled "The Nature of Academic Freedom," which appeared in the Saturday Review of Aug. 27, 1963. Commager, noted historian, author, and educator, is a former professor of history at Columbia University.)
TURN, then, to the far more important question of "subversives" on university faculties, or subversion in teaching: It is the fear of these which induced infatuated legislatures to require special loyalty oaths for teachers in the McCarthy era, and which accounts for the harassment of universities in backward states such as Massachusetts and California.
We may observe that there is no evidence of subversives on college faculties, or that the term "subversion" is so vague as to be arraigned at meaning, or that neither loyalty oaths nor inquisitions can prevent the contagion of ideas. But these observations, though just enough, are not really relevant to our central problem. What is of crucial relevance to that problem is quite simply that the academic community, if it is to be free to perform its beneficent functions, must be free to fix its own standards and determine its own credentials. No other bodies, certainly not an inflamed public nor an election-minded
legislature, are competent to fix these standards or to determine whether or not scholars meet them. This responsibility is primarily one for specialists—fellow physicists, fellow historians—and ultimately one for the whole academic community, for sometimes specialists have a narrow or jauniced view. But questions of fitness to teach and to carry on research are always academic questions.
Professional qualifications do sometimes involve questions of character, to be sure, but how, when, and where they do are matters for professional determination. And the reason for this is very simple. It is not merely that it is logical and just, but that it is the only method which can provide us with the kind of physicists and historians that we need. If other criteria than those of professional competence and the confidence of academic colleagues in the integrity of the scholar are invoked, the system itself will break down, just as medicine or justice will break down if surgeons or judges are selected by other than professional criteria. Needless to say, scholars will make mistakes in judgment, just as doctors and lawyers make mistakes in judgment. But the consequences of substituting irrelevant and pernicious criteria for professional ones in choosing academic colleagues are far more serious than
any possible consequences of occasional incompetence in professional selection.
What shall we say of university teachers and scholars who outrage public opinion by advocacy of doctrines that seem to the great majority to be erroneous? What shall we say of teachers who persistently flout the public will as expressed by resounding majorities? Once again the underlying principle is simple enough. If scholars, or students, violate the law, the law should deal with them as it deals with any other members of society who violate the law. No scholar may claim that academic freedom gives him some special immunity from the law. But if what a scholar does or says does not violate any law, but merely outrages public opinion, then it is not the business of the university to do what civil authorities are unable to do.
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So it is with the punishment, by whatever means, of those who exercise their right to express ideas that are unpopular and seem dangerous—advocacy of the cause of the Vietcong, for example, or of the propriety of mixed mar-
Daily Kansan
editorial page Friday, September 23, 1966
riages, or of the harmlessness of pornography. No doubt it is deplorable that otherwise intelligent men should entertain, let alone champion, notions of this sort, but how much more deplorable if we had the kind of society where they could not. A university is an institution where scholars are not only permitted but encouraged to think unthinkable thoughts, to explore intolerable ideas, and to proclaim their findings. There are risks here, to be sure. The Church saw that when it forced Galileo to recant, or forbade the teaching of the circulation of the blood, or the Linnaean system of botanical classification. But these are risks that society must learn to take in its stride if it expects progress in the realms of knowledge and of science.
Official Bulletin
TODAY
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Popular Film, 7 & 9:30 p.m. "All the Young Men." Dyche Aud.
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TOMORROW
KU African Club, 7:30 p.m. Movie on continent Tunisia in the Kansas University
SATURDAY
Ph.D. Final Exams: 9 a.m., Theodore e. Batchman, Electrical Engligh,
114 Learned; 10 a.m., Paul A. Mahcehay, Analytical Chemistry, 234 Malott.
Popular Film, 7 & 9:30 p.m. "All the Young Men." Dyche Auditorium.
Football, 9 p.m. Arizona at Tucson.
SINCE
SUNDAY
Lutheran Student Association, 5:30 p.m. Supper and program on "Where Are We Going?" Alove C. Kansas Union.
Criket Club Practice, 4 p.m. Intrahmural Field east of new Robinson gym. Everyone welcome. For more information, call Zafar Ismail, VI 23-874.
Carillon Recital, 3 p.m. Albert Gerken.
Popular Film, 7 & 9:30 p.m.
"All the Young Men." Dyche Auditorium.
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The opinions expressed in the editorial column are those of the students whose names are signed to them. Guest editorial views are not necessarily the editor's. Any opinions expressed in the Daily Kansan are not necessarily those of The University of Kansas Administration or the State Board of Regents.
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