Michael Ceraolo- Two Poems

Free Speech Canto XXXIX

Hail Columbia!

                         Not the song

                                              that was

the unofficial national anthem during the nineteenth century

and is now the Vice-President's song,

                                                        but

the university once run by Nicholas Murray Butler,

who,

        during certain times if not at all times,

apparently considered it a part of the government

(college presidents the unacknowledged legislators of the world?)

and acted accordingly

Dr. Leon Fraser,

a politics instructor at the school,

                                                 worked for

the Association for International Conciliation,

a pacifist organization,

                                  where,

if he hadn't been hired directly by Butler,

                                                            Butler

had been instrumental in his getting the job

Part of the job entailed visiting

and reporting on the conditions

of the military camps that were springing up

although the U.S. wasn't officially at war,

                                                             and

Fraser reported of one of them:

"Plattsburg is a fad,

the Chief Folly of 1916"

                                   and for that,

he was fired by the university

in the spring of 1916

for his pacifist activities

                                    but

Butler was just getting started

March 5, 1917

(the U.S. still not officially at war)

Butler and the university will now

investigate to determine

"whether doctrines which are subversive of,

or tend to the violation or disregard of,

the Constitution or laws of the United States,

                                                                 or which

tend to encourage a spirit of disloyalty

to the government of the United States,

or the principles upon which it is founded,

are taught and disseminated by

officers of the University"

                                      Just

what that might mean was made clear by Butler

in his commencement address June 6, 1917:

"so long as national policies were in debate,

we gave complete freedom"

"What had been tolerated before becomes intolerable now

What had been wrongheadedness was now sedition

What had been folly was now treason"

"This is the University's last and only warning to any"

"who are not with whole heart and mind and strength

committed to fight with us to make the world

safe for democracy"

A bill was being considered by Congress

to allow deploying draftees

to fight on European battlefields

James McKeen Cattell,

the first psychology professor in the United States,

wrote letter to three representatives

urging disapproval of the pending bill

                                                       The three,

Julius Kahn of California,

S. Wallace Dempsey of New York,

                                                    and

E.R. Bathrick of Ohio,

violating their oath of office

by being ignorant of the First Amendment,

wrote to Butler saying they considered this treason

(more Constitutional ignorance)

Henry Wadsworth Longfellow Dana,

grandson of the poet on his mother's side,

grandson of Richard Henry Dana on his father's side,

professor of comparative literature,

                                                  worked for

the People's Council of America for Peace and Democracy,

a pacifist group suddenly suspect

in Butler's newly converted mind

Butler and the Board had bee looking 

to get rid of Cattell for some time

because of his prickly personality,

                                                  and

had even attempted to force him

to retire in 1913,

                         and

they used this opportunity to make it stick,

making it known emphatically

that Cattell had not retired,

that he had been fired,

without any pension

(Cattell later sued, and won an annuity)

Dana was also axed,

                               for

"public conduct prejudicial to the

influence and good name of the university"

                                                              by

"under the guise of peace . . .

striving to weaken the national effort

and to nullify the national will"

                                            and

he never worked in academia again

Free Speech Canto XL

Leon R. Whipple,

director of the School of Journalism

at the University of Virginia,

opposed armed entry into the Great War:

"we can win the war only by freeing

the spirit of democracy in the Germans

by good-will"

                    because

"war does not remove the menace of autocracy

                                                                     [or]

make the world safe for democracy"

The people running Thomas Jefferson's university

treated their opponents as Jefferson did,

                                                           and

put Whipple on trial for his professional life

Whipple defended himself eloquently:

"I am charged with acts

that are deemed not in accord

with the purposes of this nation

in the present war"
"I deny that I have endangered

the true greatness or safety of this nation,

                                                             for

its single greatness and its single safety

is the right of truth to prevail"

"the right of free speech is not an academic principle:

it must be exercised for its full glory,

                                                      and

exercised under the very conditions we face today-----"

Those sitting in judgment considered the argument

and issued the verdict Jefferson's university

could be expected to come to:

"the Rector and Visitors

of the University of Virginia

do regard these utterances as

a gross abuse of freedom of speech"

"the appointment of Leon R. Whipple . . .

is hereby rescinded"