Repository: UIHistories Project: Board of Trustees Minutes - 1952 [PAGE 389]

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BOARD OF TRUSTEES

[December 28

of the College, under Dean Bowen's leadership, has t o its credit some noteworthy accomplishments. They may not meet the eye or make t h e headline, but they are known to those best qualified to judge—to scholars and students and to practical men of business. For example, there will be found A. A remarkable improvement in the comparative rating of the Department of Economics (attested to by letters from Harvard, Yale, Columbia, Chicago, Johns Hopkins, Minnesota, Iowa, etc.). B. Improvements in the undergraduate curriculum, including a four-year course in secretarial training. C. Strengthening of the graduate program, including the Ph.D. in Business. D. Establishment of the Business Management Service which, in its first two and one-half years, held 40 conferences of businessmen, sponsored 23 extension courses, and issued 22 bulletins. E. Establishment this fall of a Planning Committee to review the aims and objectives of the College and to study personnel problems and procedures relating to appointments, promotions, budgets, and lines of communication. (The Executive Committee of the College did not assign to it the equally important problem of t h e organization of departments and bureaus.) Now, all summer and fall we have held to the possibility of a working agreement built upon past achievements and plans for the future. A constructive plan was worked out jointly by the Provost, the Dean, and t h e Executive Committee of the College, but the Committee declined to ratify it or put it in force. These measures, in short, have not been successful in bringing together t h e pro-Bowen and anti-Bowen groups. A new peak of intransigence was reached at the open meeting of t h e Board of Trustees on November 24th. What happened there is fresh in the minds of us all, and I need not review it. Those supporting Dean Bowen felt t h a t progress can best be made under his direction and t h a t deterioration will set in speedily if his contract is not renewed. Those opposing Dean Bowen felt t h a t most of the trouble stems from his deficiences, such that assurance of his non-reappointment as Dean would resolve all problems t h a t rise above the level of normal give-and-take in a College. At the same meeting, Dean Bowen asked t h a t an early decision be reached. Accordingly, it seems to me that a formal recommendation is in order, although it has not been heretofore for these reasons: A. Persons within and without the University were confused by irresponsible charges of loss of academic freedom, subversiveness, and indoctrination. B. T h e spring of 1950 was not the time to consider the reappointment of the Dean. C. The elected members of the Executive Committee of t h e College were behaving in an irregular fashion. D. There was a prospect of agreement on ways to improve staff-administrative relations in the College. Let me repeat, there are no Communists in the College of Commerce; there is no evidence of indoctrination. As far as I know, not a single statement of a professor in his field of competence has been challenged by anyone in authority. What has come to the foreground, with increasing definition, is the tactless remark, the personal criticism, the slight—real or imagined, the lapse of memory, the urge to move ahead— the Dean feeling obstructed by the Executive Committee and t h e Committee failing to represent divergent views in the faculty. Once the great issues were disposed of in June, these lesser complaints were exposed and they grew with repetition. IV In presenting certain recommendations, I should like to reassure any staff members and students inclined to give way to an "all-is-lost" reaction: A. All administrative officers are expected to live up to the letter and the spirit of academic freedom. B. Academic freedom is a two-way responsibility, calling for reliability on the part of all members of the University family. C. Academic freedom does not embrace its self-destruction through disloyal subversive acts or doctrines. D. An interest in growth and change—in ideas—will continue t o be a mark of quality in any faculty. E. Staff (academic and nonacademic) and administrative officers are expected