In order to facilitate the new arrangements for the selection of Rhodes scholars in the United States and to provide a convenient source of information on this side of the ocean, the Rhodes trustees have recently appointed Prof. Frank Aydelotte, of the Massachu setts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, Mass., as American secre.. tary for the scholarships.

THE CARNEGIE PENSION AND INSURANCE SCHEMES.

Early in 1916 President Pritchett, of the Carnegie Foundation, proposed a new plan which, it was hoped, would gradually supplant the pension system which has been administered by the Foundation. for the past 10 years. The plan as described by the Dartmouth committee, which is included in the replies of the presidents and committees of the associated institutions concerning the proposal, in the eleventh annual report of the Carnegie Foundation, contemplatesThe incorporation under the laws of New York of an insurance and annuity agency for the benefit of college teachers. Each teacher upon his entrance into service in the college would be required to take out with this insurance agency a minimum amount of term insurance to mature at the age of 65, and to purchase by annual contributions a minimum annuity which would begin upon retirement from teaching and at the expiration of the insurance. To make the annuity provision effective, a separate savings association is to be created which receives the annual contributions of the teachers and invests them, purchasing at the time of retirement with the accumulations an annuity from the insurance association. It is proposed that the college shall participate to the extent of 50 per cent of the cost of insurance and annuity up to an agreed minimum, or as an alternative that the college shall contribute erly toward the purchase of the annuity. The individual is free to increase the amount of both insurance and annuity at will, and it is expected that he will increase his contributions as his salary increases. The details of the plan are not fully stated. It is clear, however, that agency expenses, a large factor in old line insurance, would be avoided.

Administrative expenses and taxes are apparently to be borne by the Foundation, although at one point there is a suggestion that the administrative expenses may come from surplus if there is any. It is not definitely stated what disposition would be made of surplus, should the mortality experience prove to be more favorable than the tables upon which the rates will be based, but the inference is clear that such a condition will lead to the payment of dividends to the policyholders. The Foundation is to guarantee 4 per cent interest on invested funds.

One unique and distinctly favorable feature of the plan is that which provides for the return of accumulations toward an annuity in case of death, disability, or withdrawal before the annuity is available. Again, even after the annuitant has come into possession of his annual income, any balance of invested funds to his account are returned to his estate in case of death.

In case of death of the annuitant, his widow will receive half of his annuity during her life. The disability privileges are to be made available at the end of 15 years as professor instead of 25 years under the present plan. After this period of service and in case of complete disability, the Foundation will, at its 111003°-19- -4

own cost, pay the insurance premiums and a minimum pension of $1,200 a year during the period of disability.

The plan was not well received on its first submission to the associated institutions. It was, however, readily conceded that the Foundation would have to be relieved of some of its growing financial burdens. But the institutions which are beneficiaries of the Foundation expressed the opinion that:

The privileges and expectations which have been created under the existing rules of the Carnegie Foundation constitute moral claims against the endowment on the part of such teachers and administrative officers now on the staff of associated institutions as under the present rules would receive retiring allowances and that adequate provision for scrupulously satisfying all these claims should be made before the fund is otherwise drawn upon.1

In view of the opposition to the plan, the matter was officially brought to the attention of a joint commission including six members of the board of trustees, two members of the American Association of University Professors, one member of the Association of American Universities, one member of the National Association of State Universities, and one member of the Association of American Colleges. After mature consideration the commission unanimously adopted the following resolutions:

Voted: Referring to the resolution of the board of trustees of the Carnegie Foundation, adopted in November, 1915, that "whatever plan is finally adopted will be devised with scrupulous regard to the privileges and expectations which have been created under existing rules," this commission expresses the opinion that the extension to all teachers at present in the associated institutions of the privilege of continuing in the present system would completely meet all their reasonable expectations. The commission assumes that the trustees of the Carnegie Foundation will in due time announce a date after which the privileges and expectations of the present system will not be available to those newly entering upon the profession of teaching.

Voted: That the trustees of the Carnegie Foundation be requested to give all possible consideration to the needs of the older teachers in institutions which are not yet, but may be later, associated with the Foundation.

Voted: The commission does not know the extent to which assistance can be obtained outside the present funds of the Foundation, but it is acting on the expectation of substantial assistance in carrying a large but limited load, and with the further understanding that adequate assistance can not be obtained to carry on the ever-increasing pension burden without calling upon institutions and individual teachers to bear a share.

In harmony with the last recommendation the commission recommended to the trustees of the Carnegie Foundation a plan of insurance and annuities. The purpose of this new organization is

to set up the machinery under which the teacher may protect himself and his family from dependence, whether by his own death or by old age or by disability; to furnish to the teacher the security of a contract, so that the man who enters upon the accumulation of an annuity at 30 may have a

1 Eleventh Annual Report of Carnegie Foundation.

contract for its fulfillment at the agreed age; to afford these forms of protection in such manner as to leave to the teacher the utmost freedom of action ard to make his migration from one institution to another easy. Finally, whatever machinery is set up to accomplish these purposes should be operated at a cost within the reasonable ability of the teacher to pay.

The proposed charter embodying these purposes is under the title of the Teachers' Insurance and Annuity Association of America. The incorporators who subscribed their names February 1, 1918, are as follows: Elihu Root, Nicholas Murray Butler, Arthur Twining Hadley, Jacob Gould Schurman, Alex. C. Humphreys, Charles P. Stone, John Bassett Moore, Robert Weeks de Forest, George Woodward Wickersham, Newcomb Carlton, Edward Robinson, George Foster Peabody, and Henry S. Pritchett.

ACADEMIC FREEDOM OF SPEECH.

Up to the year 1917-18 the problem of academic freedom of speech involved chiefly the expression of opinions on social and economic questions. With the coming of the war the danger zone shifted. It is natural in times of great national tension like the present that the personal views of thinking men should be expressed with greater vigor or passion than usual. Differences of opinion on questions of national or international policy, ventilated with heat on both sides, easily lead to the impugnment of motives and even to the damning charge of disloyalty. As a result of this surcharged condition of the intellectual atmosphere, many doubtless well-meaning individuals have suffered the extreme academic penalty for utterances which under ordinary circumstances would be passed by with scant notice or criticism. There has developed, therefore, a special problem of academic freedom of speech in war time.

LEADING OPINIONS ON THE PROBLEMS OF ACADEMIC FREEDOM OF SPEECH.

One of the discussions on this subject appeared in the joint report of the Columbia University committee on education and the special committee on the state of teaching. It is of particular interest as embodying an expression of the policy of the board of trustees:

In the whole history of the university, dismissals from the university of a member of the teaching staff have been but six in number; and the record shows that in all of these cases but one the judgment and opinion of representative members of the teaching staff were before the trustees as an important element in affecting their action. In the one exceptional case the reasons for action had no reference to the academic work or relations of the person concerned.

The power of removal has been exercised by the trustees only in these very rare instances, and then only after full investigation and (save in the one case above mentioned) consultation with members of the faculties. In each case

there had been a state of facts which in the judgment of the trustees rendered such action imperative.

In view of these facts there can be no ground for apprehension on the part of anyone that the charter powers of the trustees will be arbitrarily exercised. In the whole history of Columbia University there is no instance where the trustees have ever subjected any teacher to restraint or discipline by reason of his classroom teaching. The trustees have more than once been urged by other members of the university, by alumni, by parents of students, and by the public press, to take action of this character, but they have never done so. Yet ultimate decision as to whether the influence of a given teacher is injurious to private morals or dangerous to public order and security is one which the trustees may neither shirk nor share nor delegate. We fully concur in the opinion expressed by the president in his annual report for 1910 that academic freedom imposes academic responsibility, and that there are distinct limitations upon academic freedom which should be self-imposed, namely, "the limitations imposed by common morality, common sense, common loyalty, and a decent respect for the opinions of mankind."

In the 1916-17 annual report of the president of Columbia University a more complete statement is made concerning the questions of academic freedom and tenure, the following quotations from which are herewith appended:

It would be little short of a calamity were it not possible for an academic teacher to change his place of occupation without thereby reflecting upon the intelligence or the integrity of those with whom he had been associated, and similarly, if it became impossible for the governing board of a school system or of a school or college to substitute one teacher for another without bringing charges against the person displaced. Any contrary theory assumes a preestablished harmony of which not even Leibnitz dreamed and a preestablished competence which would render it impossible for anyone to be appointed to a teaching position who was not ipso facto entitled to steady promotion and increase in compensation and to a lifelong tenure. * * Security of tenure is desirable, but competence and loyalty are more desirable still, and a secure tenure purchased at the price of incompetence and disloyalty must sound a deathknell to every educational system or institution where it prevails. These are all matters of grave importance in the government of an educational system or an educational institution. They can not be dismissed with phrases or formulas, but must be met and decided in accordance with sound principle and the public interest.

*

** is or ever

There is no real reason to fear that academic freedom has been in the slightest danger in the United States. Evidence to the contrary is quite too manifold and too abundant. What is constantly in danger, however, is a just sense of academic obligation. When a teacher accepts an invitation to become a member of an academic society, he thereupon loses some of the freedom that he formerly possessed. He remains, as before, subject to the restrictions and the punishments of the law; but in addition he has voluntarily accepted the restrictions put upon him by the traditions, the organization, and the purposes of the institution with which he has become associated. Try as he may, he can no longer write or speak in his own name alone. Were he to succeed in so doing, what he might write or say would have, in nine cases out of ten, no significance and no hearing. What he writes or says gains significance and a hearing because of the prestige of the academic society to which he

belongs. To that prestige, with all that that word means, the academic teacher owes a distinct, a constant, and a compelling obligation. To maintain one's connection with an academic society while at war with its purposes or disloyal to its traditions and organization is neither wise nor just. No one is compelled to remain in an academic association which he dislikes or which makes him uncomfortable. What the ancient Stoic said of life itself is true of a university: "The door is always open to anyone who has an excuse of leaving."

On the other hand, academic obligation is reciprocal. The academic society of which the individual teacher is a member owes him encouragement, compensation as generous as its resources will afford, and protection from unfair attack and criticism, as well as from all avoidable hamperings and embarrassments in the prosecution of his intellectual work. Each individual member of an academic society is in some degree a keeper of that society's conscience and reputation. As such, the society as a whole must give him support, assistance, and opportunity.

The same type of mind which insists that it knows no country but humanity, and that one should aim to be a citizen of no State but only of the world, indulges itself in the fiction that one may be disloyal to the academic society which he has voluntarily joined, in order to show devotion to something that he conceives to be higher and of greater value. Both contentions affront common sense and are the result of that muddled thinking which to-day is bold enough to misuse the noble name of philosophy. One effect of much recent teaching of what once was ethics is to weaken all sense of obligation of every kind except to one's own appetites and desire for instant advantage. That ecoTomic determinism which is confuted every time a human heart beats in sympathy and which all history throws to the winds has in recent years obtained much influence among those who, for lack of a more accurate term, call them selves intellectuals. These are for the most part men who know so many things which are not so that they make ignorance appear to be not only inter esting but positively important. They abound just now in the lower and more salable forms of literary production, and they are not without representation in academic societies.

The time has not yet come, however, when rational persons can contemplate with satisfaction the rule of the literary and academic Bolsheviki or permit them to seize responsibility for the intellectual life of the Nation.

Neglect of one's academic obligation, or carelessness regarding it, gives rise to difficult problems. Men of mature years who have achieved reputation enough to be invited to occupy a post of responsibility in a university ought not to have to be reminded that there is such a thing as academic obligation and that they fall short in it. It is humiliating and painful to find, with increasing frequency and in different parts of the country, men in distinguished academic posts, who choose to act in utter disregard of the plainest dictates of ethics and good conduct. It is fortune indeed that, however conspicuous are instances of this disregard, they are in reality negligible in number when compared with the vast body of loyal, devoted, and scholarly American academic teachers. It is noticeable, too, that instances of this lack of sense of obligation rarely arise, if ever, in the case of those men whose intellectual occupations bring them in contact with real things. It is only when a man is concerned chiefly with opinions and views, and those opinions and views of his own making, that he finds and yields to the temptation to make his academic association the football of his own ambitions or emotions.