Notes

[1] From Dissent, Autumn, 1959.

[1] From Dissent, Autumn, 1959.

[2] From Liberation, January, 1959.

[3] From i.e., The Cambridge Review, Number 5.

[4] Throughout, AF refers to Academic Freedom in Our Times, by Robert M. MacIver. N. Y., 1955. Columbia University Press. 304 pp.

[5] One major, and surprising, defect in these books is their omission of any discussion of the small radical colleges like Antioch, Black Mountain, Goddard, etc., founded on more liberal principles than the authors’, and therefore with both a more intransigent standard of freedom and more embarrassment in being consistent. I should have thought their careers would be valuably relevant for comparison and contrast.

[6] But consider the dilemma: Such massive research and experiment must be financed, if not administered, by Foundations; and those chosen by or for Foundations tend to be at least “sound” if not “safe.”

[7] So Black Mountain College was founded by a migration in the early 1930’s, and the migrant faculty was thenceforth the owner of the college, without a governing board of trustees.

[8] This “neutrality” certainly has also a simpler and more traditional spring: the detachment of the wise and experienced, and the tradition of the academy as the home of the wise and experienced, with the motto nil admirari. Such an attitude is, of course, not neutral at all, but the provision of a background of security pre-different to controversial opinions, and relying on which, youth can risk having definite opinions.

[9] Teaching at the primary level is different, for there the emphasis is on teaching the pupil, not the subject matter; and there is then a profession of pedagogy analogous to medicine, and of which the remedial branch is psychotherapy.

[10] From Midstream, Winter, 1958.

[11] From Midstream, Summer, 1957.