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To the Editor of The CRIMSON:

American Defense, Harvard Group, is an unofficial organization of teachers and other members of the Harvard community who are united by the common conviction that we in the United States are face to face with a grave emergency that requires vigorous and effective action for the two fold purpose of defending American democracy against aggression from abroad and of developing that democracy at home.

We believe that defense against foreign aggression requires that we exert ourselves to the utmost to build up our own armed forces and also that we give all possible assistance to those nations who are fighting our battles by defending themselves against aggressors that are our enemies as well as theirs. We believe that developing democracy at home requires a continuous effort to improve the conditions, enlarge the opportunity and elevate the dignity of the masses of the American people.

All Should Help the Defense

Since we are ourselves members of a university community, we are deeply interested in the question of what American universities as institutions, and teachers, and students in those universities as individuals, can and should do to aid in the defense of American democracy. That all American citizens should scrupulously observe such duties as have been placed upon them by the law of the land, including the Selective Service Law, is undeniable. There is also a special duty which devolves upon universities to assist the American people and its government by the full cooperation of their laboratories and their skilled personnel in aiding measures of national defense.

To this extent we of the Harvard Group are in whole-hearted agreement with the views expressed by President Butler in his recent address to the Columbia faculties. But there are certain statements in that address with respect to the meaning of academic freedom with which we most emphatically disagree.

Universities Must Remain Free

Freedom of speech--freedom to oppose ideas and policies which have the support of popular majorities or of government officials and to express one's disagreement in emphatic terms--provided one does not advocate disobedience to law--is the heritage of every American citizen. It is an essential element of that democratic faith which we are now bending all our energies to defend. Freedom of speech and of opinion within university communities is peculiarly necessary to the survival of our national liberties and of our civilization. It is the special function of universities to provide a place in which men may seek to discover truth by the method of free inquiry--of fearless investigation of every question which concerns mankind. These who participate in such inquiry must be free to state the conclusion which they have reached without regard to whether those conclusions are pleasing or displeasing to the university authorities or to other influential persons.

That is what we in universities mean when we speak of academic freedom. It is our most precious possession, and it is of especial importance that it be maintained in America now that it has been blotted out in the universities of one country after another by the repressive forces of totalitarianism.

Attacks Butler Statement

President Butler tells us that this academic freedom of ours "has no meaning whatsoever" for university students; that "it relates solely to freedom of thought and inquiry and to freedom of teaching on the part of accomplished scholars." We challenge that statement. A university, as we understand a university, is a place where students as well as teachers engage in "thought and inquiry." University education is something more vital than the mere acquisition of information or the reception by the student of the ideas and opinions of his teachers. It is experience in thinking about different questions and in expressing and defending his own conclusions about the right answers to those questions. A university does not give its students a genuine education unless it concedes them the same freedom which it gives to members of its faculties to think for themselves and to state the uncensored results of their thinking through such channels as they may desire, including student-edited papers.

Right to Debate Defense

The fact that the question at issue is one of national policy in an emergency in no way affects this principle. Students, like the rest of us, have no right to disobey the laws or to advocate disobedience to law. They have the same right as the rest of us have to express vigorous disapproval of anything which government has done or proposes to do.

Obviously, no one, be he professor or student, may speak for the university without authority, and all individuals and groups within the university should recognize the danger of impairing its good name by ill-considered utterances. But the right to seek truth and to express opinions belong to all alike. Our university students are members of a fellowship of free men, not raw material to be molded into docile little yes-men by the skilled hands of their teachers.

We disagree no less emphatically with President Butler's statement about academic freedom as it concerns the university teacher. Here he does indeed admit that much freedom exists in some measure; but he would have us believe that it is subordinate to something which he calls the university's freedom. He urges those whose convictions bring their conduct into conflict with the university's freedom "to withdraw of their own accord from university membership."

Must Aid Defense

Since these references to the university's freedom to pursue its unhampered course are immediately preceded by an emphatic statement of the duty of the university to aid and support the defence policies of the national government, these words can hardly mean anything else than that those who are convinced that these policies are mistaken should either keep silent or sever their connection with the university.

So interpreted, the statement is a denial of an essential principle which a university cannot renounce if it is to perform its proper function in our American society. For it is the special function of a university to supply the community with men who can think deeply and clearly because they are detached from the conduct of affairs and are members of a fellowship in which hard thinking and fearless statement of one's convictions are especially prized. The graver the national emergency, the greater the need for honest and courageous thinking about national problems.

Resignation Not Necessary

There are a good many members of American university faculties who are sincerely opposed to the policies of our government with respect to foreign relations and national preparedness. There are some who believe that the totalitarian countries will leave us alone if we leave them alone. There are others who are ardent pacifists and object to the use of force even for the purpose of defending civilization against barbarism. We of the Harvard Group are convinced that these men are grievously mistaken in thinking that the freedom which they and we cherish can be preserved except by strengthening our own armed forces and by giving all possible aid to those nations who are defending our democracy by defending their own. But the fact that these academic colleagues of ours are seeking to maintain American freedom by travelling what we believe to be the wrong roads is no reason for asking them to resign from the fellowship of university scholars.

That a university should endeavor to assist the government in its stupendous task of preparing our national defences--moral as well as material--is highly desirable. But universities cannot remain true to their own ideals if they are to judge men's fitness to remain on the faculties not by the excellence of their scholarship, but by whether their views on questions of national policy coincide with those of government officials or university administrators. Our universities are strongholds of American freedom. If we fail to preserve freedom within academic walls, we shall fail to preserve it in the country at large. And if we fail to preserve it there, our boasted defence of American democracy will not be defence. It will be surrender.  E. MERRICK DODD, JR.  For American Defense,  Harvard Group  Oct. 8, 1940.