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Caption: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1944
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1046 BOARD OF TRUSTEES educational policies, curricula, and appointment of the personnel of a university. For example, some legislatures have passed laws requiring faculty members of state universities to take the oath of allegiance. In some states attempts have been made to secure through legislation the teaching of natural science so as to be acceptable to certain groups professing forms of religious belief. In the cases of some institutions organized groups on the outside have been able to secure the dismissal of faculty members whose beliefs were obnoxious to the group. Fortunately the University of Illinois has been free from such outside interferences with the administration of the University. Bearing in mind the nature of the accusation made against the University of Illinois that there has been built in it since 1934 "a political empire," the Commission made an extended and diligent search to discover whether any influence of this kind had successfully registered itself in the University since 1934. As a result of these inquiries the Commission can say without reservation that it has been unable to find a single instance in this period. It is the consistent, independently given testimony, on the part of the President of the University, of members of the Board of Trustees, and of teaching and administrative members of the faculty that the determination of what the educational policies should be and how they should be carried out within the University and the determination of the curricula have all been decided within the University and in accordance with procedures of administrative control as officially set up. According to the Statutes of the University of Illinois it is the responsibility of the Board of Trustees to pass upon all educational policies, appointment of personnel, and establishment of curricula. The regular procedure is that any policy or curriculum shall be presented by the President to the Board for its approval, after having passed through certain steps which are clearly specified. The Commission has been unable to discover any transgression of this procedure. It is, of course, within the rights and duties of the Board to refuse to approve recommendations, if, in the judgment of the Board, they should not be approved. The Board has exercised this [28 — A.C.E. Report]
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