Word: betas
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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Explaining the action, Paul Olum '40, First Marshal of Phi Beta Kappa, declared that the honor society's job was "the maintenance of intellectual standards," and linked the local chapter's action with the national organization's current drive for an "intellectual defence fund...
Olum's statement is as follows: "There has been an awareness in Phi Beta Kappa recently that the tradition of intellectual freedom of the American university is not something to be taken for granted by is something to be fought...
...surprising that Phi Beta Kappa is a champion of academic freedom, because almost everyone of any intelligence at all approves of it, just in the same way he would approve of Christian morality or young love. There may be some yapping minorities that attack it, and some paper advocates who in practice sabotage it, but still the great majority of Harvard students would condone academic freedom in extravagant terms. But granted that academic freedom is a good thing, the constitution of an undergraduate committee to protect it is something else. And the summons to this constitution of an undergraduate committee...
...second question is whether Phi Beta Kappa should god-father the proposition. No one can possibly object that this organization is coming to life, for the intellectual aristocracy sits in a coign of great vantage. But come what may, Phi Beta Kappa should exist as a completely nonpartisan intellectual organization. Whatever the proposed committee may be in theory, by fact and by reputation it will inevitably assume a color and a partisan nature. The issues dealt with will inevitably revolve in political and ethical spheres which should be strange...
...double sentiment which has moved Phi Beta Kappa to take this action is greatly to be praised. But the concrete turn which this sentiment has taken is rather questionable. Until a case of real suppression arises at Harvard, the Committee for Academic Freedom would serve no function but to cast aspersion upon Harvard's present-day tolerance in the eyes of the nation's liberal press. This is not a very worthwhile stake on which to gamble the position of aloof grandeur which PBK now occupies in the eyes of Harvard students...