Before an unprecedented meeting of the Columbia faculties on Thursday, President Nicholas Murray Butler announced that his university is at war with Germany. That was not a startling revelation; most of his audience know it already. What he did not state in so many words, but what his address unmistakably said, was that non-interventionists are no longer wanted on the Columbia faculty.

"Our university," Dr. Butler began, "has become with the passing years a powerful public servant in the field of liberty." But his next words were to belie that statement. Once again, as he had in 1918, Dr. Butler was sounding the death knell of academic freedom at Columbia. "Before and above academic freedom of any kind or sort comes the right and obligation of the university itself to pursue its high ideals unhampered and unembarrassed by conduct on the part of any of its members which tends to damage its reputation, to lessen its influence or to lower its authority."

Under the shallow camouflage of national defense, fascism now comes to Morningside Heights. Not the open brutal kind made famous by Adolf Hitler, but fascism nonetheless. Herr Hitler says that those who do not conduct themselves for the advancement of National Socialism will be exterminate. Dr. Butler phrases it somewhat more subtly (perhaps that is the advantage of a college education): "Those whose convictions are of such a character as to bring their conduct in open conflict with the University's freedom to go its way towards its lofty aim should . . . withdraw."

Yet Dr. Butler has the crust to maintain that the Columbia faculty is still free. As every Nazi is free to agree with the official dicta, so every Columbia teacher is now free to follow the University in its "lofty aim."

Dr. Butler's definition of a university is indefensible. He likens it to a church in which "no reasonable person would insist upon remaining" if he did not agree wholeheartedly with its principles and doctrines. But a university is not a church. The purpose of a church is to teach absolute and revealed truths; the purpose of a university is to search for truths that are as yet unrevealed.

Dr. Butler seems to conceive of a university as its president, a few deans, and the corporation. Obviously it is far more than that. And the opinions of faculty and students alike should be sought after rather than crushed. Yet for "accomplished scholars" alone, Dr. Butler reserves the right to academic freedom; for himself, he reserves the right to name them.

To quote from President Butler's own report for 1926-27, "The scholar who in sincerity and knowledge criticizes or dissents from some well-established institution, idea or practice . . . is as much entitled to that dissent as his fellow who defends what this scholar condemns. This is one of the hardest lessons for public opinion in a democracy to learn. The persecuting instinct is so deep and so widespread and the passion for uniformity and conformity is so strong that many a missile will continue to be leveled at the devoted head of any scholar who dissents from a prevailing or a popular judgment." And to quote the 1927 Butler once more, "that was sage counsel then and it is sage counsel now."