Blackest Sheep

Last week the American Association of University Professors met in St. Louis for the purpose, among others, of revising its list of "ineligible" universities " colleges. The institutions which spot this list are the black sheep of U. S. education, and the A. A. U. P. will not accept new members from their faculties. The "ineligible" pen contained five such black sheep. DePauw (Greencastle, Ind.), Brenau (Gainesville, Ga.) and Harris Teachers College of St. Louis were penned up because their respective presidents had arbitrarily dismissed professors--in most cases outspoken liberals. So was Rollins (Winter Park, Fla.), which considers itself to have been shabbily treated, contends that an experimental, progressive college like itself should be privileged to shuffle its faculty when it chooses. The only black sheep of importance was the U. S. Naval Academy at Annapolis. The Academy was blacklisted in 1933 after it replaced over half of its civilian instructors with regular Navy men. Scrutinizing the five black sheep in the pen, the professors decided that the least consequential of them had washed itself white. Opening the gate a crack, they allowed Harris Teachers College to scoot gratefully out. Then the professors set about penning up a big, grimy animal which had long been running free. This was the University of Pittsburgh, whose chancellor is pale, Messianic John Gabbert Bowman and whose home is a handsome Gothic skyscraper, in the heart of Pittsburgh, which will cost $10,000,000 before it is finished. Pitt first got into trouble by firing a loud liberal named Ralph E. Turner. When an A. A. U. P. committee investigated Pitt, it found that Professor Turner was only the latest of many liberals whom Chancellor Bowman had forced out (TIME, March 4). Dr. Bowman, the committee believed, had sold out to rich, reactionary Pittsburghers. A committee of the Pennsylvania Legislature reached the same conclusion. Pitt received its biennial Appropriation from the State with a warning that, unless it reformed, that appropriation would be the last. Two professors traveled to St. Louis last week to plead for Pitt. In effect both bleated: "We're not nearly so black as we used to be." Unconvinced, the rest of the Professors unanimously shoved black Pitt into the pen. In Pittsburgh the news was conveyed to Chancellor Bowman. Said he: "What of it?"

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