Professors Meet

In the pale green West Ballroom of Chicago's Hotel Stevens last week gathered 100 college professors. An alert observer counted ten beards, So pairs of spectacles. It was the 18th annual meeting of the American Association of University Professors, assembled chiefly to discuss the subject nearest & dearest to them: Academic Freedom. Also there popped up another question close to pundits' hearts: low professional salaries.

Fire of Learning-Onetime chairman of the Yale chapter of the A. A. U. P. is Professor Yandell Henderson, able physiologist, expert on noxious gases, no fearer of publicity. Born in Kentucky 58 years ago, graduated from Yale in 1895, he is a somewhat unkempt savant, fond of his pipe, his British tweeds, his tennis. Professor Henderson developed gas-masks used by U. S. troops in the World War, has done much research in automobile exhaust gases, in the biochemistry of respiration and the physiology of circulation. Year ago he wrote an article for the Yale Alumni Weekly in dispraise of "industrializing education" and "unionizing professors," publication of which coincided with the A. A. U. P.'s meeting in Cleveland (TIME, Jan. 12). Last week he performed again. In a letter to the Weekly he calculated the maintenance cost of new Yale buildings at 6% per annum, which would represent the income from a fund greater than the whole original building cost--not, as is generally assumed, the income from a fund equal to 25% of the original cost. Professor Henderson found "that each additional million cubic feet . . . in buildings draws from general income a sum equal to the salaries of four or five professors, or seven or eight assistant professors, or nine to twelve instructors. . . . It appears reasonable to suggest that as many as possible of the new buildings should be kept closed, unheated and unlighted, until times improve."

The day his communication appeared in the Weekly and in newspapers throughout the land, Professor Henderson spoke to the Chicago meeting in much the same vein. Vast building programs, said he, result in underpaid professors. At one university, "by 1945 I suppose it will be necessary to stop paying professors' salaries altogether, so that the wages of the president, the janitors, window washers and scrubbers can be met." Professor Henderson's figures as to the proportion of university income paid to professors: at Johns Hopkins, 65%; University of Chicago, 52%; Princeton, 42% ("pretty fair"); at Yale 40% ten years ago, 34% last year, with income more than three times as large. "It will be even less this year," lamented Professor Henderson, whose own salary is understood to be from $8,000 to $10.000 a year. The proportion at Harvard has dropped the lowest: from 24% five years ago to 23% last year. "Mind you, Harvard is where the fire of learning was lit. All the other fires of education in what's now the United States had their spark from Harvard. And now. .

Committee A is a body of the A. A. U. P. to which a professor, feeling himself aggrieved, may apply for help. Its chairman, Astronomer Samuel Alfred Mitchell of the University of Virginia, reported last week that it had handled 60 new cases this year, an unprecedented increase over last year's 27. Apparent reason: the fact that university heads might use the Depression as an excuse for getting rid of professors who were politically or personally distasteful. Professor Mitchell said he had been "deluged" with requests for investigation of this & that dismissal. This he deplored, as did all present. But Committee A has not been able to put its finger on any specific case of abuse. Most publicized case of the year was that of Professor Herbert Adolphus Miller, who was dismissed from Ohio State University supposedly because he made an "inflammatory'' speech to disciples of St. Gandhi in Bombay (TIME. June 8). Committee A investigated, found his dismissal unwarranted, told Ohio State it would lose the public esteem of the U. S. There rested the matter last week, save that an Ohio State delegate to the A. A. U. P. meeting last week made vague assurances that something would be done.*

The A. A. U. P. has a membership of some 12,000, representing all sorts of institutions all over the U. S. Its largest chapters are in the largest universities in the East and Middle West. But many a small college has an aggressive chapter with a strong, energetic membership. Though for the last two years there has been a movement to make a "professors' union" of the Association, its powers at present consist chiefly in uttering threats at enemies of academic freedom. Last week it moved a step nearer unionization. Delegates voted to keep a "non-recommended list" of unsatisfactory colleges which would "deter" (not prevent) member-professors from teaching in them.

* The case of Dr. John Earle Uhler, ousted from Louisiana State University last October because of his novel Cane Juice (TIME, Oct. 26), was closed last fortnight when the University paid his year's salary in full. The American Civil Liberties Union, which had wished a court action, uttered grumps.

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