An Affair to Remember, continued

The trustees tried to pull the lever as quietly as possible, waiting until the academic year had ended and all the students and faculty had left campus. Knowing that Nearing hadn’t a chance of finding a new job on such short notice, they voted to arrange payment of his salary for another year. But since that could be “construed only as an admission of the nefarious character of their actions,” writes Saltmarsh, “they voted not to have the salary provision recorded in the minutes of their meeting.”

“We ‘young fellows’ did not propose to be hanged without a tussle,” wrote Nearing in his autobiography. He sent out some 1,500 letters “to the newspapers of Pennsylvania, the leading papers of the country, the press associations, associates in other universities, and to influential individuals all over the United States.”

“From the outset the case was national news,” he recalled. “Publicity was excellent and generally in our favor.”

“Nearing Affair National Issue,” was the Philadelphia Public Ledger’s front-page headline on June 20. “Colleges throughout Country Discuss its Effect on ‘Free Speech.’ Professors of Wide Repute Fear University Will Suffer.”

Although some local members of the General Alumni Society issued a statement supporting the trustees’ action, Penn’s reputation did indeed suffer. The New Republic cast the trustees as “black reactionaries,” adding: “The issues here are as vital as any in American life, because the Universities are coming more and more to focus the thought of the nation … They cannot do the work if they are governed by stupid rich men or stupid politicians.” Many newspapers expressed similar sentiments, though not all. The New York Times sided with the University, saying that “there is altogether too much foolish babbling on the part of some professors.”

When the fledgling AAUP took up Nearing’s cause, it brought instant prestige and publicity. The organization’s president, John Dewey, argued that if the governing boards of universities were to treat a professor as a “hired man,” they would “drive from their institutions all men of ability and backbone, and retain to teach the youth of the country only weaklings in mind and character.”

The day after Nearing was let go, Dr. Lightner Witmer, professor and chair of psychology, told Patten: “I don’t give a damn for Nearing. He and I disagree on almost everything, but this is my fight. If they can do that to him they can do it to any of us. It is time to act.” Witmer cancelled his vacation plans and spent the summer investigating and writing The Nearing Case: The Limitations of Academic Freedom at the University of Pennsylvania by an Act of the Board of Trustees.

Professor Felix E. Schelling, professor and chair of English—and, like Witmer, a political conservative—led a faculty movement to have the trustees’ decision reversed. Gentlemen, he noted tartly, “do not do such things.” The Wharton faculty demanded that Nearing be rehired, and raised the equivalent of half a year’s salary to assist him in his campaign.

Some 1,500 Penn students signed a petition protesting Nearing’s dismissal. One unnamed professor reported “serious dissatisfaction and dissension within the university and without,” adding that Penn had been “humiliated in the public view” and that “younger members of the faculty are shaken in their sense of security and allegiance to the university,” while older professors “are perplexed and dissatisfied.”

Amid concerns of an “impending exodus among the faculty,” Nearing himself urged them to stay: “The University does not belong to the Trustees,” he told colleagues; “it belongs to you, its teachers, and its students. That the Trustees have an essentially undemocratic power and have used it irresponsibly does not warrant you confirming them in it. You must think of your students and of the University’s mission.”

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Copyright 2002 The Pennsylvania Gazette Last modified 2/28/02