Speeches by Dr. Ralph Spitzer and Dr. L.R. La Vallee

Dr. Span's charge that supports the Losanco theory proves devotion to the party line and insults and laws of intellectual freedom. A reading of my letter in chemical and engineering news will show that I did not support Losanco. A group including such distinguished scientists and Nobel Prize winners as Dr. J.R. Oppenheimer, Dr. Harold C. Uri and James Fronk on their advisory board has introduced Dr. Span's charge better than I can. In a nine-page statement entitled The Spitzer Case in the Templations, April 26, 1949, the Federation declares in part the latter charge that is supporting Losancoism besides being denied by Spitzer appears without relevance since Losancoism is a concept which certainly has scientific content. The truth or falsity of the theory can only be decided by comparison with the facts. The competence and integrity of a scientist cannot be judged by his beliefs but only by

his performance as an investigator. It must be concluded therefore that President Strand's actions in the Spitzer case raise not only the general issue of academic freedom but the specific issues of scientific freedom and imposed orthodoxy as well. I subscribe wholeheartedly to the concept of academic and scientific freedom expressed in the Federation statement. I am opposed to the imposition of scientific orthodoxy and the suppression of unorthodox concepts wherever such actions may occur. Let me sum up the argument presented by President Strand. He, along with President Allen of the University of Washington and others, would determine whether a person is intellectually free and confident to teach by investigating whether that person follows a party line. In the words of President Allen, it would take too long to determine whether a teacher is guilty of intellectual dishonesty by investigating his teaching and research the proper place

to look. Thus, these college presidents repudiate that democratic position expressed in the words of the AAUP. The principle that guilt is personal, that it does not arise from association, that it cannot be attributed to the holding of an opinion or even to intent in the actions of an overt act is fundamental in Anglo-American jurisprudence. I wish now to turn to the more important problem of the significance of the OSC cases and the question of what we can do to restore academic freedom both at Oregon State and in the whole United States. It may appear that the principle victims of a dismissal for political reasons are those who have been dismissed, but the main victims are the students and faculty who are left behind. When even one faculty member is dismissed for political unorthodoxy, it strikes terror into the hearts of the rest of the faculty.

At the University of Washington, in addition to the three faculty members who were dismissed, three others were put on probation so they could prove they no longer had any communistic sympathies. Putting them on probation was unnecessary. As Dr. Alexander Michael John, former president of Amherst, said in the New York Times magazine March 27, quote, the entire faculty is now on probation. As many members of the OSC faculty consider themselves on probation is evident from a number of instances. Shortly after our dismissals, the political science department was asked to hold a forum defining the terms used by President Strand. They reportedly declined on the grounds that the subject was too hot to handle. A scheduled film on the Soviet Union was called off because the instructor who had scheduled it didn't want to get into trouble. A student who registered for a reading and conference course asked if he could compare

the series of Mendel and Morgan with those of Losenco. The professor said he wasn't interested, in any way he was sure that Mendel was right. It is clear that in such an atmosphere that can be no intellectual freedom, no following as a truth wherever it may lead. While Smith's words of 1923 concerning an act to require conformity among New York state teachers are appropriate here, his words are, it deprives the teachers of their right to freedom of thought. It limits the teaching staff of the public schools to those only who lack the courage of the mind to exercise their legal right to just criticism of existing institutions. The students suffer from this intimidation of those who are supposed to teach them intellectual freedom, but they also suffer in more direct ways. They cannot always hear speakers of their choice. You remember the labor speaker Don Brown who was refused permission to speak on campus because he was too easy to get.

It is reported to me by an officer of one of our scholastic honoraries that the faculty advisor intended to disapprove admission of a qualified student to this society because he thought the student was a communist. Many of you are also familiar with the student who wrote a letter to the barometer about our dismissals, only to be summoned to the president's office with her father before her letter ever appeared in the barometer. Students may also be harmed by loss of prestige of the institution. The academic and professional world frowned on institutions which have bridged academic freedom. Our distinguished alumnus Dr. Linus calling President of the American Chemical Society wrote to President Strand, quote, a violation of the principles of academic freedom by the administration of the college will cause the college to lose some of the strong men on its staff and among its students and will make it difficult for it to obtain outstanding men in the future, unquote. The condemnation of the Federation of American Scientists which I quoted will hurt our institution as will the protests which have been received from the New York and Cambridge Boston branches

of the American Association of Scientific Workings. To send the AGO State chapter of the AAUP and the college chapter of the New York Teachers Union, how many other organizations have sent in protests I do not know. The barometer is another symbol of the suppression of intellectual ferment which goes with loss of academic freedom. The young progressives have recently performed a service which is probably bearing fruit by now by indicating the extent of suppression of vital news, especially regarding the dismissal cases. Where academic freedom is a bridge, students are likely to be denied the right to make extra curricular activities a training ground for citizenship. Let me tell you a little story that illustrates this. A group of students stimulated by our dismissals decided to form an organization for academic freedom, but the atmosphere on campus was so charged that the name was soon changed to the more abstract civil liberties committee, then it was decided not to take up a spitzer

levali case. When the petition for recognition of this already emasculated organization was presented to the student life committee, it was refused on grounds that a human relations committee of the Senate, then nonexistent, would provide duly organized channels with, quote, full power to make studies and investigations in the broad field of human relations. In this proposal to set up a human relations committee was tabled by the Senate, thus was the student's academic freedom again tabled at OSC. If students wish to retain their freedoms, they cannot commit such things to happen. Many students are inclined to say, this isn't my affair, but such an attitude opened the door to the very fascism that President Strand forso in October 1947 might come to us if orthodoxy was enforced in the name of anti-communism. In Italy and Germany, many students felt that it was none of their business if professors

or fellow students were dismissed for racial impurity or political unreliability. And in not fighting such suppression, they helped fascism come to power. Let us recall the words of Abraham Lincoln in a speech at Edward'sville, Illinois in 1858, familiarize yourselves with the chains of bondage and you prepare your own limbs to wear them. A custom to trample on the right of others, you have lost the genius of your own independence and become the fit subject of the first cunning tyrant who rises among you. So I don't think we will allow ourselves to lose step by step the freedoms for which so many American students have sacrificed. It is within our power to refuse to allow our campuses to be turned into rubber stamps for orthodoxy. We can, if we see clearly and work unremittingly, secure the reinstatement of all those teachers all over the country who have been dismissed for political non-conformity.

And so doing, we will at the same time protect the rights of students to have competent and fearless teachers, to have their own organizations under their own control, to have truly representative student newspapers, to have student self-government from below, to have the right to choose any outside speaker they wish to hear without institutional censorship and to discuss with the full freedom the pros and cons of every issue of the day. Before I introduce our next speaker, I would like to mention at this point that following the next speaker there will be a short intermission during which time those who have classes

may leave and those who wish to stay for a question and answer period may come down in front where our moderator, Mr. Bill Maxwell, class of 51, will be able to hear their questions more clearly and so relay them to the speakers. Our next speaker now is Mr. Lavalli who joined the Oregon State College Economics Department in the spring of 1947. He received his MA from the University of Indiana in 1941 and prior to coming to Oregon State College, he taught at the University of Toledo where he was also a statistician for the Toledo Business Review. He was employed as chief economist for the Non-Paris Medals Commission of the War Labor Board and this was in 1942 and 1943 and he was in the Armed Forces and then upon his return from military service he was appointed as hearing officer for the war labor board.

I think it's interesting to note that Mr. Lavalli is one of the more popular students here in the campus in the Department of Economics at least judging by the fact that his classes are always the first to be filled up at registration time. I'd like to present this time Mr. Lavalli.