894 
arrangement that you prefer. Let the alumni, 
or in state universities, perhaps some larger 
constituency of interested persons, elect one 
governing board—not one of absolute au- 
thority, but a representative and influential 
board, with a veto power large enough 
to be a significant guard, and an ad- 
visory power large enough to keep the uni- 
versity in touch with its public. Let there 
be another board, of another origin, to act 
as legal owner of the property. Let this board 
have a real, but not too potent authority as 
a manager of affairs. Let these two boards 
cooperate with mutual criticism. Then you 
could afford to give your president more power 
and dignity than you do in number (2). Ido 
not agree that the president should be as shorn 
of power as you make him. Let him be rea- 
sonably limited, but not helpless. ‘“ Security, 
permanence, honor” are all consistent with a 
reasonable presidential leadership. With the 
spirit of your proposals (3) and (4) I am, on 
the whole, in sympathy, although I could not 
go so far as you do. I am willing, as at 
Harvard, to submit the appointment of officers 
of instruction to the veto of general governing 
boards; and to have those boards, as well as 
the faeulties and other teaching “ units,” take 
part in all legislation that concerns general 
educational policies. A professor should have 
a solid tenure of office during good behavior, 
and should also have freedom of teaching. 
A department, or division, or other such small 
“unit” should have a large scope of discre- 
tion as to its own work. But one must keep 
in touch with one’s alumni and one’s public 
as to all questions of common educational 
policy; and this is why the legislation by gen- 
eral boards is needed, as well as the relative 
autonomy of departments and of individual 
teachers. You insist on the latter. To that 
insistence I agree; but I want the general 
boards to aid also in legislation. As to (5), 
I think that you go too far in expecting the 
departments or divisions to elect a senate 
capable of doing all their principal legislation 
for them. Once more—a frequent interaction 
with governing boards of the type of our Har- 
vard “ overseers ””—boards that represent the 
SCIENCE 
[N.S. Vou. XXXV. No. 910 
alumni, and that can veto rather than initiate, 
seem to me a useful aid and check. What one 
wants is to get all the forces expressed in the 
university life, without arbitrary mutual in- 
terference, but with constant and mutual criti- 
cism, and without anarchy, although with 
plentiful individual freedom. On the whole 
that is what we have at Harvard. 
I recognize the danger of your “ Seylla of 
presidential autocracy” and “Charybdis of 
faculty and trustee [collective] incompetence.” 
But I have seen so much efficiency, of the 
right kind, result from the lodging of great 
powers in the hands of a wise and able presi- 
dent that I am unwilling to agree, concerning 
this officer, that “his salary should not be 
larger, his position more dignified or his 
powers greater than those of the professor.” 
Of course the right man for president is hard 
to find, and of course the wrong man is oceca- 
sionally chosen. JI wish that every man ac- 
cepting a university presidency might do so 
with assurance of the opportunity to retire at 
any time from the office on a respectable pen- 
sion; this would be a happy way out, for the 
president and for the university, In many 
unfortunate cases; but I would not see the 
powers of a well chosen, well qualified presi- 
dent stinted. On the other hand, I have seen 
a great president content to lay his most 
cherished projects before a large faculty and 
labor year after year to bring this faculty to 
his own way of thinking, convinced that in 
this assembly he had, on the whole, the most 
intelligent and the most fairminded body of 
men in the world, for his purposes. The de- 
liberative habits of this faculty under the 
president were most exasperating to those who 
are fond of swift decisions in educational 
questions, and by common consent, as matters 
of general interest pressed upon us, matters of 
detail and routine were delegated more and 
more to committees or to special administra- 
tive officers. Moreover, departments or divi- 
sions, as they grew in size, assumed new func- 
tions, somewhat as they should according to 
your plan. But through all these changes, a 
faculty remained a fairly coherent body, mem- 
