"I wish your Honor or deputies of your Honor could have gone into the college halls and gotten some of the men, some of the men who are not in any way connected with this particular situation, gotten them to describe the atmosphere now. It is what it was in 1928, where, in the faculty dining room, intelligent men did not discuss intelligent things, because they did not dare, your Honor. They discussed road maps, roads, the weather, because there was no confidence that if they discussed more serious things, whether they should be Democrats or Republicans for instance, that it might not redound to their academic disadvantage. In more recent years, the faculty, as a whole, has faced its own problems more courageously. It has given freer rein to its ability, to its intellectual curiosity, expressed its conviction. Now a pall, an intellectual pall, is settling upon the college. People do not want to be seen speaking to other people, although they are personal friends, for fear that somebody will say, "Well, so and so doesn't talk to the right people about the right things." That is not an atmosphere in which a college can flourish. My sympathy goes out to the students who have to sit before teachers who will be afraid to answer questions that will be put to them-because the students will put questions and the teachers will be afraid to answer them, not often because they do not know the answers, but because they do. Is that an atmosphere in which a college-the largest municipally supported college in the world-can such a college flourish in such an atmosphere?"
Quote Details
Added by wikiquote-import-bot
Unverified quote
0 likes
Communists from the United StatesJews from UkraineJewish socialistsMarxists from the United StatesMembers of the Communist Party USA
Original Language: English
Available Languages (1)
Sources
Imported from EN Wikiquote
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Morris_Schappes
Revision History
No revisions have been submitted for this quote.
Categories
Morris Schappes
Morris U. Schappes (pronounced SHAP-pess, born Moishe Shapshilevich in Kamianets-Podilskyi; May 3, 1907 – June 3, 2004) was a Jewish educator, writer, radical political activist, historian, and magazine editor who lived most of his life in the USA.
24 quotes on TrueQuotesView all quotes by Morris Schappes →
Related Quotes
"Anti-Semitism has become a major issue for the American people, and for all democratic mankind. In the pattern of imp…"
"As Marxists, we stress the need of bringing the mask for privilege and the mask for frustration into their proper rel…"
"It helps one keep one's balance to remember that there are other important problems clamoring for action...just the o…"
"An active conscience is a formidable thing."
"Words must be backed by deeds."
"the entire commercial press of our nation is not the "free" press it loudly claims to be that it is, rather, the prin…"
"From the founding of our nation there has been a continual, many-angled struggle between these who would sacrifice th…"
"The finance-capitalists who dominate American life are not Jews (Morgan, Rockefeller, DuPonts, Ford, etc.), and the n…"
"It is because the forces of national unity in this country, under the great social discipline of a just war, have gro…"
"The main principle of a democracy is that the rights of any one group, be it minority or majority, are connected with…"