June 23, 1922] 



SCIENCE 



669 



SCIENTIFIC EVENTS 



THE AGITATION AGAINST THE TEACHING 



OF EVOLUTION 



Pkofessor J. V. Dennet, president of the 

 American Association of University Professors, 

 addressed on June 14 the following letter to 

 the moderator of the -conference of the North- 

 ern Baptist churches meeting in Indianapolis : 



As president of the American Association of 

 University Professors, I desire to call attention to 

 the peril confronting our higher institutions of 

 learning at the present time because of the ' ' Fun- 

 damentalist " or " anti-evolution ' ' movement 

 which has appeared in two state legislatures and 

 in the constituencies of several colleges controlled 

 by or affiliated with the religious denominations. 



Letters from presidents and professors indicate 

 widespread anxiety lest the cause of higher edu- 

 cation suffer serious injury through attempts at 

 coercive measures, interfering with the professor 's 

 duty to teach the truth of his subject as deter- 

 mined bj' the body of past and present laborers in 

 his own field and as coniirmed by his own con- 

 scientious studies and researches. The chief 

 injury is not merely to the professor who loses 

 his position or to the particular institution that 

 sacrifices a permanent aim to a passing fear. It 

 is in the degradation of the office of teacher; in 

 the establishment of distrust and suspicion in the 

 public mind towards all colleges and universities; 

 and in the immediate loss to both church and 

 state of strong forces for good through the slack- 

 ening of devotion and enthusiasm and the encour- 

 agement of casuistry, subtlety and insincerity 

 among those who are called to teach with an eye 

 single to truth. 



The colleges controlled by or affiliated with 

 religious bodies are public institutions in the 

 sense that they solicit and receive students on 

 terms common to all good colleges. They impose 

 on applicants no political or religious tests. They 

 forewarn the public of no doctrine in history, 

 economies, literature and the sciences that is 

 essentially at variance with the body of free and 

 accepted teaching in these departments of learn- 

 ing throughout the country. Their professors co- 

 operate in the work of all of the learned societies, 

 and are bound by the code of honor in scientific 

 research and by the obligation of scrupulous hon- 

 esty of statement in teaching. Any invasion of 

 this high obligation is an attack on manhood in 

 teaching and destructive to real education. 



Any college or university, whatever its founda- 



tion, that openly or secretly imposes unusual re- 

 strictions upon the dissemination of verified 

 knowledge in any subject that it professes to 

 teach at all, or that discourages free discussion 

 and the research for the truth among its pro- 

 fessors and students will find itself shunned by 

 professors who are competent and by students 

 who are serious. It will lose the best of its own 

 rightful constituency and will cease to fulfill its 

 high ministry. The same results, disastrous to 

 true education, will follow whether the restric- 

 tions are adopted voluntarily by the college itself, 

 or are forced upon its administrative officers by 

 the state legislature, an ecclesiastical body or by 

 powerful influence operating through trustees. 

 The question of legality and of good motive is 

 also irrelevant so far as moral and educational 

 results are concerned. 



The five thousand members of the American 

 Association of University Professors in active 

 service in some two hundred colleges and univer- 

 sities of the United States are of one mind on 

 the fundamental necessity of preserving the 

 integrity of the teaching profession. They realize 

 that their work is a sacred trust that can be ful- 

 filled only in freedom of conscience, loyalty to the 

 truth, and a profound sense of duty and of per- 

 sonal responsibility. They claim the support of 

 all good Americans whatever their creed in re- 

 sisting measures that will prove ruinous to our 

 institutions of higher learning. 



THE PROPOSED BOMB.AY SCHOOL OF 

 TROPICAL IVIEDIClNEi 



We learn from India that the government of 

 Bombay has declined to proceed with the 

 project for establishing a Scliool of Tropical 

 Medicine at Bombay. The news is not a little 

 surprising, for the government of Bombay had 

 very definitely expressed its intention to estab- 

 lish the school, and Sir Dorab Tata had prom- 

 ised to contribute a lakh of rupees a year 

 towards the expenditure which was to be in- 

 curred. The Bombay School of Tropical Med- 

 icine was to have been opened on April 1 last, 

 and all arrangements were made for this pur- 

 pose. It was only at the last moment that the 

 Bombay government determined to cut out of 

 the budget the whole sum allotted to the school, 

 and issued orders that the scheme should not 

 be proceeded with. In consequence Sir Dorab 



1 From the British Medical Journal. 



