June 12, 1908] 



SCIENCE 



933 



vote upon the question of my dismissal, which 

 has been recommended by the Executive Com- 

 mittee. I thus give you the opportunity to 

 vote against a faithful servant of the Uni- 

 versity in order to please the Chancellor. 



I believe the trustees are satisfied that the 

 vague, indefinite and unsupported charges 

 made against me by the Chancellor have no 

 foundation in fact but are based on his un- 

 reasoning imagination, and that if it were 

 possible to give me a fair trial before a jury 

 of expert engineering educators, I would not 

 only be acquitted of all charges, but would 

 be commended for my five years of faithful 

 and efficient labors. I believe, moreover, that 

 the majority of the trustees would gladly vote 

 to retain me in my position but for the fact, 

 as I stated in a letter to the trustees dated 

 May 29th, that "they are afraid that if they 

 voted against the Chancellor he would resign, 

 and as the University needs money, which 

 they think he alone can raise, he must be 

 retained for his money-getting ability, no 

 matter how objectionable he may be in other 

 respects." 



I think the trustees are mistaken in their 

 idea that the Chancellor is the only one who 

 can raise money for the University, for other 

 colleges and universities all over the land are 

 getting large sums of money without his aid. 

 Even if it were true that he is needed as a 

 money-raiser, I venture to suggest to the 

 trustees that the two capacities in which the 

 Chancellor is preeminent, viz., oratorical 

 power and power of getting money, do not 

 necessarily qualify him for the exercise of 

 autocratic power over all the interests of a 

 great university. They do not qualify him 

 as a judicious spender of money, as an edu- 

 cator, as a judge of men, as a ruler of deans 

 and faculties, as a disciplinarian, as a land- 

 scape artist, as an architect, or as a harmon- 

 izer of conflicting interests or ideas. The 

 autocratic system of government of a univer- 

 sity is a bad system. 



A writer in the Independent of December, 

 28th, 1905, thus described the situation in a 

 university under autocratic control: 



When the wisdom of letting a man lord it over 

 an aggregate of employees instead of conferring 



with a company of scholars is questioned, the 

 answer is the eflSciency with which the autocrat 

 can get things done. The president gets money 

 and students and builds marble palaces. . . . The 

 president may draw students from one institution 

 to another; he does not create them. The marble 

 palaces may be mausoleums for the preservation 

 of the corpses of dead ideas and monuments 

 erected to the decay of learning. 



I suggest that if it is necessary to have an 

 orator and a money getter for the chancellor 

 of a university, there is no reason why his 

 activity should not be confined to those things 

 in which he is an expert. There is no reason 

 why he should be given autocratic power in 

 things in which he is not expert. The admin- 

 istration of these things had better be left to 

 the separate colleges, to the University Senate, 

 to committees of trustees, or to minor ofBcials, 

 as may be most suitable for the different ob- 

 jects to be accomplished. 



In closing I wish to comment on a rumor 

 which I am informed is being industriously 

 circulated. It is to the effect that I have 

 entered upon a fight to do all the damage I 

 can to Syracuse University. Nothing could 

 be further from the truth. In fact, I have 

 often said, and I say now, that the fight I 

 have been making is the best thing that could 

 happen to the University. I am giving it a 

 house-cleaning which it very much needs; I 

 am bringing to the light of day some things 

 that should be exposed; I have revealed the 

 existence of certain diseases, and have pre- 

 scribed the remedies; that is all. Some day 

 the University will have a higher ideal than 

 that of mere bigness, a Chancellor who is an 

 educator and who will not try to be an auto- 

 crat, a board of trustees that will be in touch 

 with educational affairs, and deans and facul- 

 ties who can keep their positions without sac- 

 rificing their self-respect. Then the humilia- 

 tion through which the University is now 

 passing will be forgotten and it will reach the 

 dignity of being one of the great intellectual 

 centers of the world. 



"Very respectfully, 



Wm. Kent 



