Word: thinking
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Dates: during 1940-1949
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...seems to me that the interservice wrangling is a healthy democratic sign. We taxpayers should be pleased that our Armed Forces are fighting for the privilege of giving us what they think is the best possible protection. We will have to start worrying about defense ourselves when the branches of our Armed Forces stop worrying...
This College has kept its integrity. It has sheltered unorthodoxy just as it has sheltered grifters. It has needled the orthodox world from time to time, just as it has occasionally disturbed its own conformists. Its only requirement of its students has been that they think once in a while and wear costs and ties to dinner...
...shifty, and treacherous colleagues, and I do not wish to collaborate with them in any program of political or social action; even when they profess to be working with you on this or that issue, their actions reveal that they have different and incompatible ends in view. Hence I think university presidents are justified in not hiring known Communists, and are justified in firing them in cases where a teacher has clearly sacrificed his freedom to use his own independent judgment. Use of this latter power, however, threatens a flood of abuses; it can only be held in check...
These declarations of three Harvard presidents are, as you observe, all of a piece. They embody a consistent doctrine that can, I think, be summed up as follows...
What sort of a place would Harvard be it if went down this road? It would, I think not require six months to destroy the morale of both our teachers and students, and thereby our usefulness to the country. I think one need do no more than state the necessary implications of what you ask to demonstrate that nothing could be more alien to the principle of free expression that Harvard stands...