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Volume 72, Number 9 Tuesday, October 1, 1963 t J North Carol tna Jmuxry '4 I n r; . : mm Qtfp latlg (Mr 3fM 70 Years of Editorial Freedom Offices on the second floor of Graham Memorial. Telephone number: Editorial, sports, news 942-3112. Business, cir culation, advertising 942-2138. Address: Box 1080, Chapel Hill, N. C. Entered as 2nd class matter at the Post Office in Chapel Hill, N. C, pursuant to Act of March 8, 1870. Subscription rates: $4.50 per semester; $8 per year. r r Published daily except Mondays, examination periods and vacations, throughout the aca demic year by the Publications Board of the University of North Carolina. Printed by the Chapel Hill Publishing Company, Inc., 501 West Franklin Street, Chapel mil, N. C. THE DAILY TAR HEEL is a subscriber to United Press International and utilizes the services of the . University News Bureau. Academic Freedom In Germa-M -. -g V By ROBERT POWELL Note This column was sent to The Tar Heel by Bob Powell from Gottingen, Germany this summer. About Those Inconsistencies We have been asked two important questions in that portion of the great debate over the President's Public Ac commodations proposals that is occur ring on the campus. First of all, a reader wanted to know, how can we be for equal rights for all 4 and also give unremitting support to the accommodations bill? The reader pro fessed to see a basic inconsistency in our position. Secondly, we have been asked how we can support the Supreme Court's ruling ; outlawing mandatory Bible-reading and prayers in classrooms, and support the accommodations bill. i Normally we don't answer readers' letters. For one thing, it inhibits letter writing, as the authors are apt to feel they can't win; and secondly, if wTe an swered every letter we get, we'd have time for nothing else. However, these two questions are im portant, and on the minds of more than ; just the two people who posed them, so we shall try to explain our reasons for supporting the accommodations law. First of all, 31 states of the union al ready have Public Accommodations laws many of them far more stringent than the one under consideration . by Con gress. , Beyond that, under English common law, one of the bases of our own legal system, an inn-keeper was required to serve all well-mannered and orderly per sons who requested service. ! Furthermore, there already exist many laws regulating private property, such as Minimum Wage and Hour laws, Zoning laws and laws regulating sani tary conditions of facilities serving the public. All this does not mean we need an accommodations law. But it does point out that regulating private property is not a radical new concept, and it plus the concept of equal treatment in places of public accommodation was not dis covered by President Kennedy in June, 1963. j Now, having put this question into some perspective, what about our read , ers' two arguments? The first one, about our being for equal rights for all and also supporting EDITORIAL STAFF Gary Blanchard, David Ethridge Co-Editors Managing Editors . Wayne King Fred Seely Associate Editor , Peter Harkness Photo Editor ; ; Jim Wallace Sports Editor Curry Kirkpatrick John Montague . Jim Wallace Asst. Sports Editor Night Editor Reporters: Mickey Blackwell, Administration Peter Wales, Campus Affairs Hugh Stevens, Campus Affairs Sue Simonds, Desk Bruce Williamson, Desk Dona Fagg, Desk Reviews Editor Steve Dennis Women's Editor " Diane' H He Features Editor I Chris Farran Science Editor Mat Friedman BUSINESS STAFF Business Manager . Art Pearce Advertising Manager ., Circulation Manager Subscription Manager Asst. Advertising Mgr. . Asst. Business Mgr. Sales , .. Fred McConnel ; John Evans Bryan Simpson Woody Sobol Sally Rawlings Frank Potter Dick Baddour Bob Vanderberry the accommodations law, only seems to be an inconsistency on our part. For what the accommodations bill would do is to recognize in law the natural right of all men to be judged as men, as individuals, not solely as a , member of a certain race, creed or color. i The bill does take away the segrega tionist owner's freedom to blanketly dis criminate against ten per cent of the population he is licensed to serve, simp ly because he wishes to. But is that a higher right than the right of a man to be judged on his own merits? Only a person whose values are in serious need of re-ordering will argue 'yes' to that question; only a person whose commitment to Christian prin ciples is in great doubt. i That brings us to the Supreme Court's ruling outlawing mandatory Bible-reading and prayers in the classroom. The second letter-writer asked how we could support that ruling and also support the accommodations law. What our friend overlooked is the substantive difference between religion and public accommodations. Prayer and religion are essentially a private matter. They are between a man or a child and his conscience, and we believe they should remain that wayT A restaurant owner, however, is li censed to serve the public by the state. Thus, this is essentially a matter be tween that man and the state a public matter. Now, this accommodations law would not stop that man from having his preju dices. It would simply prevent them from being, in fact, public policy. This law therefore recognizes that private prop- erty has its responsibilities as well as its privileges. There are some further considerations involved. One is that the basic evil involved in all this is the use of a double standard by segregationist proprietors. Persons licensed to serve the public have the right to refuse service to objectionable customers but they have the responsi bility to apply the same standard in all cases, not just when it suits their whim. Thus this bill does not attempt to legislate morality. It attempts to legis late behavior, which is what all laws are for. A second consideration is that this accommodations bill serves far more than just a moral purpose. It provides many small town store-owners with an honorable way out of the racial dilem ma. These are the owners who see the Civil Rights handwriting on the wall, but know they'll be ostracized by their more reactionary townsmen if they let down their segregation barriers. These men know that unless those barriers come down, demonstrations are the only remedy the Negro has at pres ent. This. la w gives sueh small town store owners the excuse they need to go ahead and do what should be done, without forcing them to leave town immediately afterwards. And it gives Negroes an alternative to, disruptive demonstra tions. These are the main reasons we see no inconsistencies in our position. And these are the reasons we urge others to consider in their own evaluation of this gripping problem. "Academic Freedom" is the key word in the German Univer sity system. In the Germany of 1800-1810 two important factors were mak ing themselves evident: the new desire for personal liberty and free government that had spread from France, and the gradual emergence under the leadership of the Prussians of a national consciousness of the concept of a German people. It is in this general back ground that the present-day Ger man university - system was founded. Through the writings of Fichte, Schleiermacher, and Wilhelm von Humbolt, brother of the scientist and explorer of South America, there emerged the outline of a plan for a new, reformed type of higher educa tion. At the heart of the system lay two axioms: the unity of re search and teaching, and aca demic freedom. Von Humbolt later .became Minister of Cul ture in Prussia and in 1810 founded the Friedrich Wilhelm Universitaet in Berlin. Fichte and Schleiermacher accepted chairs there and the new sys tem was put into operation. The Friedrich Wilhelm Universitaet quickly became the leading ac ademic institution in Germany and remained so until the Second World War. The historic univer sity lies now in East Berlin. The name has been changed to honor Humbolt, although any re semblance between the ideas taught in this university now and its namesake is not onily coinci dental, but probably also sus pect. The two central concepts of the Humbolt system, as it has come to be called, are central also in our system, but under different interpretation. For ex- ample, in America the principle of the unity of research and teaching means that the college instructors also do research. In Germany it means that the scholars and Scientists also give lectures. This is an important distinction as we will later see. On the other - hand, our in terpretation of the principle of academic freedom cannot pre tend to compare with the broad ness of the German interpreta tion. In the German university there are very few restrictions upon the student. There is, for example, no such thing as a "re quired . course." Theoretically, the student may pick and choose from the great storehouses of knowledge exactly what he wants and needs to meet his particular ends and to answer his particular questions. Papers are written only in the later semesters, and then with nowhere near the frequency to which we are accustomed. Homework is limited almost ex clusively to mathematics cours es and quizzes are given only sporadically in certain fields, rarely more than one per se mester. Attendance is required only in seminars in the later se mesters Examinations must be faced only twice; once to es tablish candidacy for the degree itself. Both sets of exams stress nrehension of uie jjruau "-r anywhere to just about any where else. There are also rela tively few opportunities for com munal living. Most students live in single rooms in town. The number of extra-curricular field rather than specific facts in activities open to the student is snprific contexts The practical operation of the system goes something like this. Sometime before the start of the semester, a "Description of Lectures" is published by the University and put on sale in all bookstores in the town. The students buy it and decide what is for their requirements inter esting and necessary. Lectures begin theoretically on (Nov. 1 or May 1. but usually start about a week later. The first thirty days of the semester constitute a sort of a period of grace, during which any. lecture can be visited by any student to determine the answers to a number of ques whether he is really interested in the subject, whether it is fitted to his level of sophistication, whether the quality of the lecture is sufficient to merit time and effort being spent on it, and a host of oth ers. Sometime during this period the student must belegen a German word for which there is no good, simple translation in this context. It means the stu dent declares officially to the university his intention of hear ing certain lectures. These lec tures are entered into his "Study Book," which must be signed by the respective pro fessors. This is the official rec ord of what the student has done and is reviewed at the examina tions. It also serves to fix the amount of his fees, since these are regulated by the number of hours of lectures the student hears. The lecturers themselves, incidentally, get a cut of this money themselves, making their income partly dependent on the number of people willing to lis ten to them, which is actually not such a bad idea.) Finally, a student may be legen as little or as much as he desires. He is his own boss in this matter and although each department publishes a one- or two-page list of the subjects in which it prefers that its degree candidates have some proficien cy, no one in the administration even attempts to influence the student in his choice. The re straint, however, lies in the fact that one day the student will have to face ' his examinations and if he has not "heard" enough lectures; he will be de- nied candidacy. On the other hand, if he hears more than us ual, he will have taken more time to get his degree, a factor which is today increasingly more important to German, students. This student is also likely to find the scope of his examina tions, parts of which are oral, perhaps broader than he had expected. Just as the system here is different, so is the university environment also different. There is, for example, no "campus". The university - buildings are scattered all over the town, necessitating about a fifteen minute walk in order to get from also much smaller. The student faculty ratio is much higher than in America, about 50-1 in Goettingen. Furthermore, these faculty members are virtually inaccessible except to students doing what we would consider high-level graduate work. Class es are huge, running as high as 600 students. Seminars with 80 100 students are not at all rare. There is recommended reading, but rarely a text. The asking of questions in class is virtually unheard-of. The German student is no more satisfied with this system than his American counterpart is with the American system. If anything, perhaps he is a bit more dissatisfied, and with rea son. Topping the list of com plaints is the lack of contact between students and professors and the relative lack of concern of the latter for the former. As one German student said to me, one gets the feeling that the uni versity could function equally well without students. The pro fessors could do their research, give their lectures and go blithe ly about their business without ever seeing a student. There is no doubt that some do. The next most frequently be . labored subject is size of classes. Most students soon give up trying to "get anything out" of their classes aside from an over-all . outline of the subject, and de vote their time to group efforts with other students to fill in these outlines from reading and dis cussion. Seminars, except on the highest level, are likewise dis appointing to most students be cause of the large number of participants. In general, the student adopts a "Why fight it?" attitude and resigns himself to getting his education outside class on his own hook. German students also decry the conditions they are forced to live under. These include generally high rent, lack of space, poor light, and draughty, ill - heated rooms. Also, the student living by himself has a difficult time meeting and getting to know other students. In the eighteenth and nine teenth centuries students banded together into organizations simi lar to our fraternities for mutual social benefit. .Today, these or ganizations have come to be identified with militarism and Na tional Socialism (although they were banned under the Third Reich), as well as snobbishness, the old aristocracy and certain political opinions. These are qualities which leave the aver age German student more or less unenthusiastic. Today there is increasing demand for some thing better. More Studenten heimer, dormitory-like buildings, usually catering to a certain field (Law, Theology, Medicine, etc.), are being built and more univer sities are experimenting with "student villages," smaller hous ing units (30-40 students) in vil lage - type arrangements. In the light of social and eco nomic structure of today, there seem to this observer to be other shortcomings of the systems. The tremendous industrial and eco nomic expansion of the past half century or so have wrought cer tain social changes which are most apparent in the United States and which have been at tested to by a veritable mountain of literature, ranging from the semi-popular writings of Packard and White to the more scholarly treatises of David Riesman, et al. Although Germany has been set back in this development by two devastating global wars, and al though the gigantic force of Euro pean tradition has served in gen eral as a bulwark to these influ ences, Germany has nonetheless made strides in this direction since the war and certain symp toms of these developments can be noted in the post-war genera tion, many of whom now are in college. (As a parenthetical com ment, these social changes are bemoaned by the older genera tion as due to "the American in fluence.") One of the necessities in a high ly industrialized society is a rela tively highly educated white-collar force to man the burgeoning bureaucracy which inevitably ac companies the rise of a mam moth economic complex. Thus, a college education for the ma jority of students becomes a nec essary requirement for later suc cess and security, rather than a marvellous adventure into which one enters purely for the love of learning. Thus the modern stu dent feels compelled to acquire his diploma in the shortest pos sible time, in order to get down to the real business of life-getting ahead, raising a family, pro viding for security in old age, etc. In light of these tendencies, which are observable now in Germany and are the source of a good deal of concern in some quarters, and which must inevit ably increase as they have in the United States, the Humbolt Uni versity system is robbed of many of its advantages and its disad vantages are to some extent ex acerbated. The tremendous op portunities to broaden ones sphere of knowledge go virtually ?d,.as students pusy'thcm almftst eeludif elv- -'u'lth unusued, selves those subjects which are neces sary to the acquisition of the di ploma. If a student changes his uni versity it is primarily because he did not like it there. It is much easier if one remains at the same university for four years, since one can acquire in this period a good impression of what certain professors consider very important and what will probably be included in the ex amination. The lack of social communication among the stu dent body has an increasing neg ative effect in a world in which more emphasis is continually be ing placed on social skills. This phenomenon coupled with the un approachability of the faculty and the tendency to take the word of the professor as the declaration of a natural law also inhibit the free exchange of ideas and the development of the capacity of intelligent criticism. In short, for the outstanding student who contemplates enter ing the academic community as a profession, the Humbolt system can be a continuing adventure, allowing him to satiate fully his thirst for knowledge. Thomas Wolfe would have loved it. For the average student, the student who wishes merely to gird him self for the coming struggle to get ahead, it can be (it does not have to be) a lonely, time con suming, and frustrating experi ence. In comparison, the American college system stands up as well suited to turn out the great num ber of well-qualified, intelligent, solidly capable B.A.'s which are needed to keep the gigantic sys tem from collapsing, while at the same time maintaining enough flexibility that the outstanding student is not completely stifled. We can certainly draw some good ideas for increasing this flexibili ty from the German system, but one must not forget that the' pur pose of the university has chang ed a good deal in the last no years. The American college system, through a combination of good fortune and good plan ning, has been able to meet the challenge of the age somewhat better than the German. Power S truclnr By JAMES RESTON The New York Times The feeling against the White House in Birmingham especial ly among business leaders is sav age and plural. "The Kennedys' are the enemy, and if anything, the Attorney General is denounc ed more fiercely than the Presi dent. Birmingham didn't like Frank lin Roosevelt either. He intro duced the Fair Employment Practices Commission and the Fair Labor Standards Act, both designed to help Negroes get work at decent wages, but there was a difference then. "Would You Repeat That, Sir? The Afternoon Bomb Explosion Jarred The Microphone A Little" ctsruxaB. . 1 fmi mm Mm Roosevelt's economic policies were getting through. They were visibly helping the city get over the economic depression, and were thus a counter-force to his pro-Negro policy. But Kennedy's economic policies are not get ting through the Congress. They are bitterly resented, particular ly by the United States Steel Corporation subsidiary here, which is the largest employer. Accordingly, "The Kennedys" are denounced for both their ec onomic and racial policies by precisely those community eco nomic leaders who alone have the power to effect a compromise on the race issue. This community is not without its leaders in the bar and the church who are opposed to the present situation on moral and legal grounds. David J. Vann, an ardent young lawyer from one of the largest and most re spected families of Alabama, led the fight that recently turned out "Bull" Connor and the others in the old city administration. Two other young lawyers, C. II. Erskine Smith and Charles Mor gan, have also spoken out for compromise, but it is significant that Vann was virtually forced out of his law firm as a result and Morgan, who denounced the established order here publicly this week, is now looking for a job elsewhere. The point, then, is not that Birmingham is lacking in young leaders, and not that it is lack ing in biracial committees, but that the real power structure of the city the older men who run the industries, banks and insurance companies that in turn influence the stores and big law firms are not leading the peace effort. There are about a dozen men in this group, some of whom have worked quietly for a com promise, some of whom have tried and then withdrawn. But at no time have they all worked together. They are: Gen. John C. Per sons, chairman of the First Na tional Bank William J. Rash- ton, president of the Prof eel ivc Life Insurance Company; Claude . S. Lawson, chairman of the United States Pipe and Foun dry Company; Frank P. Sam ford Sr., chairman of the Liber ty National Life Insurance Com pany, and Lee C. Bradley Jr., a lawyer. Other influential leaders who have tried to help and are still important are Clarence B. Han son, publisher of The Birming ham News; Frank A. Plummer, president of the Birmingham Trust National Bank; Sidney W. Smyer, former president of the Chamber of Commerce, who helped negotiate the lunch coun ter dispute last May; W. II. Sterne, an investment banker; Arthur W. Weible, president of the Tennessee Coal and Iron Di vision of United States Steel; William Engel of the Engel Com panies; and Douglas Arant and Bernard Monaghan, lawyers. There is general agreement here that these men, working together with the leaders of the local clergy of both races, could do more to produce a compro mise in a month than Federal troops, Federal officials and all the national Negro organizations put together could in years. The question is who, if any body can get them together. They damn "The Kennedys" and concede that Senator Goldwafcr would carry Alabama against tne President tomorrow, but ev en this prospect only creates a new dilemma. Fo: ironically, the power of the Democratic party, which most of the leaders of this com munity deplore, also helps them dominate the chairmanships of the key committees of Congress and this Southern domination cf pe Congressional chairmanships is probably their most powerful force against President Ken- S "Srat'onist policy me Birmingham power sfruc ure wants the racial proMem Ithtl apa3Vfc wants a state,' St See ai1 this whh is compromise so difficult. zmzmmz t- - Lett ers The Daily Tar Heel soT;c:- m. m 1 1 1 r ! I w t . . a iixill- rsity commun- S as it is free of slan der of the Univo "y, so ion vl , T LDeious remarks. o letters will be edited i IJB .unIes they are tn ;;rT rlK Ion liters mim : na triple-spaced je
Daily Tar Heel (Chapel Hill, N.C.)
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Oct. 1, 1963, edition 1
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