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Academic Freedom
   Is Your Freedom
                    by Fred Harvey Harrington
                         President, University of Wisconsin
O N THE PAGES that follow, two dozen
     alumni editors from every section of our
country explain and justify academic freedom.
  What they say is essentially what the Regents
of the University of Wisconsin said 70 years
ago in the single sentence cast in bronze and
bolted to the entry of Bascom Hall.
  Every alumnus should remember that state-
ment, for it marked the turn of Wisconsin to-
ward greatness.
  Those were -ioneering days for the State and
its University. The faculty was taking its first
tentative steps out of the classroom into the
world of action, steps later to be identified as
the Wisconsin Idea and hailed throughout the
world.
  But for one of the University's leading schol-
ars of the time, Richard T. Ely, professor of eco-
nomics and champion of social welfare, those
steps led to charges that he encouraged strikes
and taught dangerous theories. They also led to
his trial before a committee of Regents, to his
exoneration, and to the historic "sifting and win-
nowing" declaration.
  The Regents reasoned in this fashion:
    "As Regents of a university with over a hundred
    instructors supported by nearly two millions of
    people who hold a vast diversity of views regard-
    ing the great questions which at present agitate
    the human mind, we could not for a moment think
    of recommending the dismissal or even the criti-
    cism of a teacher even if some of his opinions
    should, in some quarters, be regarded as visionary.
    Such a course would be equivalent to saying that
    no professor should teach anything which is not
    accepted by everybody as true. This would cut
    our curriculum down to very small proportions.
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    We cannot for a moment believe that knowledge
    has reached its final goal, or that the present con-
    dition of society is perfect. We must therefore wel-
    come from our teachers such discussions as shall
    suggest the means and prepare the way by which
    knowledge may be extended, present evils be re-
    moved and others prevented. We feel that we
    would be unworthy of the position we hold if we
    did not believe in progress in all departments of
    knowledge. In all lines of academic investigation
    it is of the utmost importance that the investigator
    should be absolutely free to follow the indications
    of truth wherever they may lead."
    Wisconsin's march of freedom did not stop
there.
  Take one of the key questions posed by our
alumni editors: "Should students, as well as fa-
culty members, be free to invite controversial
outsiders to the campus to address them?"
  Wisconsin Regents answered that question in
1922 when they declared that the "sifting and
winnowing" principle "shall be applicable to
teaching in the classroom and to the use of the
University halls for public addresses."-Ad-
dresses by right wing speakers and left wing
speakers and everything in between.
  What about students? Our Regents said this
in 1956: "The search for truth is the central duty
of the University, but truth will not be found if
the scholar is not free, it will not be understood
if the student is not free, it will not be used if
the citizen is not free."
  Here we have the basic point. This republic
does not fear the free exchange of ideas. We are
not afraid to trust our citizens. Our campus and
our republic are free. They will remain so as
long as freedom to seek the truth and to speak
out is the right of all.
                              Wisconsin Alumnus