Chicago Commando

When the University of Chicago's President Robert Maynard Hutchins emerged from a meeting of the University's Senators (full professors) last week, he was smiling--some thought, with a stiff upper lip. Ninety-four out of 136 professors present had cast what amounted to a vote of no confidence in Hutchins' basic idea of a university.

President Hutchins believes, and has said (TIME, May 1) that a university should crusade for "a moral, intellectual and spiritual revolution." The faculty prefers the orthodox academic position: the advancement of knowledge by research and teaching independent of any moral commitment except to "the Truth."

Among President Hutchins' most ardent supporters is the University's gangling, witty literary handyman, Milton Mayer. Mayer is a onetime Chicago news and publicity man, studied under Hutchins at the University, later helped him teach his famed course on the 100 Best Books. Wrote Mayer in Wisconsin's weekly Progressive:

"Mr. Hutchins is trying to overturn American education. Aren't you glad? [He also] is trying to revolutionize the modern world, and when a great big handsome president of a great big handsome university goes revolutionary, it is time to sit up and take notice. [He] is proposing a little island of socialism in a capitalistic country. ... A university, he says, is a 'consecrated community' [to] seek the salvation of men's minds. [Hutchins] wants to free professors from the pressure to pursue mink coats for their wives, or for somebody else's wives, and assure them a modest competence based on need.

"I have a fiuehrer complex about Mr. Hutchins . . . the best and wisest man I know. ... I think he is bored running [the] colossal war plant [which] the University of Chicago now is. ... So ... he decided to stage a one-man commando raid on the unguarded shrine of Let-Well-Enough-Alone. ... I believe that Mr. Hutchins is a menace to all the sacred precepts that have produced the glorious civilization we are now enjoying."

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.