326 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



ACADEMIC ASPECTS OF ADMINISTRATION l 



By Pbofessoe JOSEPH JASTROW 



UNIVERSITY OF WISCONSIN 



THE community of spirit that animates such occasions as this is 

 an interest in the academic life — a conviction, studied or casual, 

 sincere or perfunctory, that much of what makes life worthy has its 

 source here. What more appropriate than to discuss the status quo, 

 with a view to discover what forces are making for and what against 

 the vital concerns of academic welfare? 



Psychologically, I can not endorse the platitude that silence means 

 consent. As I have tried to interpret this eloquent if enigmatic ex- 

 pression, it has appeared to mean complacency, even indifference; it 

 means hesitation and timidity; it means expediency and temporizing; 

 it means torpidity or denseness of understanding. Hence the way of 

 the reformer is hard. It is upon that ill-paved road that I am to 

 venture, and with no other warrant than a common interest, to invite 

 companionship. 



The general silence in the academic ranks is hardly a convincing 

 proof that all's well; nor is the silence wholly unbroken. The litera- 

 ture of protest is growing; and the murmur of discontent may be 

 plainly heard by the sympathetically attuned ear. To appreciate the 

 atmospheric conditions that prevail in the academic grove and that 

 at times impress and oppress the dwellers therein with the suspicion 

 that they have inherited a vale of tears with a bad climate, requires 

 some familiarity with the general features of the habitat. To begin 

 with, the grove itself is no longer the peaceful retreat amid cloistered 

 walls and quiet walks, to which the bookish fancy of the uninitiated 

 and the impervious imagination of the reporter are so fondly attached. 

 The trolley clangs by its portals; the noise and dust of the city per- 

 vade its corridors; the unhedged campus is criss-crossed by throngs 

 of eager invaders seeking a short-cut to learning. The guileless, 

 absent-minded, root-grubbing professor, absorbed in profitless didactics, 

 survives only in those lingering echoes of receding ages — the comic 

 papers. The American professor desires to live in the world and to 

 assume responsibilities and privileges according to his capacity. He 

 cherishes ideals not of scholarship alone, but of service — worthy, dig- 

 nified, and by higher standards profoundly useful. Compositely 



1 An address at the Collegiate Conference in connection with the seventy- 

 fifth anniversary of Oberlin College, June 24, 1908. 



