Competition and Collaboration

Abstract

As the extreme hysteria of the war and its immediate aftermath slowly receded, some believed that academic freedom and faculty protections had become entrenched in American higher education. An editorial in the New York journal Review claimed that violations of academic freedom were extremely rare and occurred significantly less frequently than they had only a generation earlier. It went so far as to declare that Stanford University’s 1900 dismissal of Edward A. Ross would by then have been nearly impossible—and Brown University’s 1897 removal of president Elisha Benjamin Andrews, even less likely.1 Despite these and similar claims, academic freedom remained far from secured, especially for outspoken faculty. In the wake of intrigues over national politics remained pernicious battles over intramural speech: at Columbia University, James McKeen Cattell’s criticism of president Nicholas Murray Butler would have been problematic regardless of his actions related to the war. The seemingly autocratic administrators and trustees lambasted by Thorstein Veblen and others returned to center stage, with multiple faculty running afoul of their institutions for their critiques of institutional practices. Complaints received by the American Association of University Professors (AAUP) confirm these challenges.