Ivory Tower

It is surprising the number who come to the University with the sole idea of a job when they graduate. Their real aim should be to gain higher knowledge, to seek the truth and eventually to serve the community. As Fichte said: 'No one has the right to labour only for his own enjoyment, for it is only by the labour of society that he has been placed in a position to acquire that Culture.

Capitalist insecurity forces us to think of some job but without making the University an ivory tower, or a recluse of the idle rich, and realising that we still must think largely vocationally, we should not allow it to be our major incentive.

A mass of knowledge, too is useless, unless it has the driving force of a philosophy of life. It is significant therefore, that in the college, Christians and Communists are the most active. In a socialist society, when unemployment and its associated evils are eliminated, youth will have a clearer, outlook and aim in life. These words of Lenin reveal the socialist approach: 'Man's dearest possession is life, and since it is given to him to live but once, he must so live as to feel no torturing regrets for years without purpose: so live as not to be seared with the shame of a cowardly and trivial past; so live, that dying, he can say: "All my life and all my strength were given to the finest cause in the world—the liberation of mankind."

Freedom But . . .

The following, quoted directly from "Time" of May 31st, is of interest:

Academic freedom shivered a little in the anti-communist wind.

* A New York State Supreme Court justice ordered the Buffalo school board to reinstate Teacher Eleanor Dushane, and give her 1000 dollars in back pay. Principal Charles J. Castelloe of Buffalo's East High had charged the fortyish schoolmarm with insubordination, subversive activity and inefficiency. Her real offence: posting a class room notice of a lecture by Pundit Max Lerner.

* Ohio's State University's 2,640 faculty members and 4,000 other employees faced a choice between signing an anti-Communist oath or getting fired. By a 6 to 1 vote the trustees had approved a resolution by Board Member (and Brigadier-General) Carlton S. Dargusch, 47, wartime deputy-director of Selective Service. General Dargusch had heard "widespread" rumours of Communism on the Campus and thought that now was the time for teachers to "come forward and be counted." The Cleveland "Press" denounced the project as "hysterical libelling of a whole faculty . . . (the oath) won't reach the liars. It will infuriate honest men."

* The American Association of University [unclear: Professors] was studying charges that faculty members had been fired for pro-Wallace activity at the University of Georgia, the University of Miami and Evansville (Ind.) College, Most clear-cut case; the dismissal of young (29) George Parker, and assistant professor of religion and philosophy at Evansville and also County Chairman of Citizens for Wallace. Just before he got the sack, Parker had presided at a meeting addressed by Henry Wal[unclear: lad]. Explained Evansville's President Lincoln B. Hale. "Owing to Mr. Parker's political activities, both on and off the Campus, his usefulness (is) at an end The College fully subscribes to the principle of academic freedom, but. . . ."