Reporter Volume 25, No.21 March 17, 1994

By MARK WALLACE
Reporter Staff

A famous case in the history of academic freedom is the subject ofThe
Cold War and Academic Governance: The Lattimore Case at Johns Hopkins,
a book by UB sociology professor Lionel S. Lewis recently published by
SUNY Press. The case continues to have important lessons for higher
education, Lewis says.
	Owen Lattimore left Johns Hopkins in 1962 after repeated
run-ins with a university bureaucracy that was increasingly hostile to
his presence. But when in the early 1950s he was accused by Sen.
Joseph McCarthy and many others of being a Communist sympathizer if
not an outright Soviet spy, Lattimore was defended by enough members
of Johns Hopkins that he was reinstated there after a leave of absence
with pay.
	With very few exceptions, most of the 128 faculty accused of
anti-American activities during the McCarthy era were "precipitously
removed" from their academic positions, Lewis says. Lewis' previous
book, The Cold War on Campus, addressed the issues raised by those
cases. But in writing that book, Lewis says he became interested in
why the Lattimore case was different. What he discovered, he says, has
significant implications for any contemporary understanding of issues
surrounding academic freedom.
	"Many of the administrators at Johns Hopkins were also
academics," Lewis says. "Today more and more administrators are
professional administrators, who have not internalized academic norms
such as the value of academic freedom and the life of the mind, of
learning for its own sake. They may not even know what those values
are."
	The history of higher education shows three basic models of
university governance, Lewis says. These include the collegial model,
in which there is a great deal of faculty governance and concern for
excellence in academic matters such as teaching and research, the
bureaucratic model, in which the faculty is just another hierarchy in
an administrative system, and the political model, in which shifting
political power changes who controls the university.
	"The collegial model, which they had at Johns Hopkins during
the 1950s, is now mostly a thing of the past," Lewis says. "But in
general, the more prestigious the university, the more the collegial
model still holds some power.
	"At Johns Hopkins, faculty could tell the administration what
to do, and that's why Lattimore was not fired," Lewis says.
"Lattimore's case was different than other cases because Johns Hopkins
was a prestigious university where the faculty had more power, and it
was the norm there that the faculty's opinion counted."
	According to Lewis, UB was one of the few universities that
protected its faculty in the McCarthy era, when William T. Parry of
Philosophy, who later became chair of the department, was not removed
from his position despite pressure to do so. 
	"For a long time, UB showed the influence of the Samuel Capen
tradition," Lewis says. "When Capen was president, he was a great
advocate of faculty governance and academic freedom."
	But academic life is complex and changing, Lewis says, and he
points to statistics published by the U.S. Equal Employment
Opportunity Commission that show what he calls "the terrific explosion
in the number of administrators at universities in recent years."
Those figures show that between 1975 and 1985, the number of faculty
increased nationally 5.9%, the number of executive, administrative,
and managerial positions increased 17.9%, and the number of
professional and service staff increased 61.1%.
	"An administrative class has developed in institutions of
higher learning," Lewis says. "Of course, in some places it's more
prevalent than in others."
	Professional administrators may be more susceptible to outside
influences against freedom of speech and academic freedom, Lewis says.
"They might feel that they need to appeal to prominent political
figures, prominent organizations, to business communities," he says.
"But it's important that administrators tell these people what a
university is really about, as they did at Johns Hopkins."
	Lewis says that many academic administrators may have "no
vision of higher education" and may think of their concerns primarily
as managerial. "There are not many administrators who speak out on
academic issues," Lewis says. But he also adds that these days there
are not many faculty who are willing to speak out on academic issues
"like C. Vann Woodward, a young history professor then, did for
Lattimore at Johns Hopkins.
	"The collegial tradition may have lost some of its force with
faculty," Lewis says. "Faculty these days may be more concerned with
careers than with speaking out about such issues. Maybe Max Weber was
right, and bureaucracy is a force that can't be stopped. Still,
academic freedom has never meant a license to do nothing."