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Subversive Activities and Due Process
"In a university knowledge is its own end, not merely a means to an end. A university ceases to be true to its own nature if it becomes the tool of church or state or any sectional interest."
T.H. Huxley
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Sweezy
v.
New Hampshire
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Subversive Activities and Due Process
Justice Frankfurter Concurrence
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June 17, 1957
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Excerpt:
Pursuant to an investigation of subversive activities authorized by a
joint resolution of both houses of the New Hampshire legislature, the
state attorney general subpoenaed petitioner before him on January 8,
1954, for extensive questioning.
...The questions that petitioner refused to answer regarding the
university lecture, the third given by him in three years at the
invitation of the faculty for humanities, were:
"What was the subject of your lecture?"
"Didn't you tell the class at the university of new hampshire on
Monday, March 22, 1954, that socialism was inevitable in this
country?"
"Did you advocate Marxism at that time?"
"Did you express the opinion, or did you make the statement at that
time that socialism was inevitable in America?"
"Did you in this last lecture on March 22 or in any of the former
lectures espouse the theory of dialectical materialism?"
These pages need not be burdened with proof, based on the testimony of a cloud of impressive witnesses, of the dependence of a free society on free universities. This means the exclusion of governmental intervention in the intellectual life of a university. It matters little whether such intervention occurs avowedly or through action that inevitably tends to check the ardor and fearlessness of scholars, qualities at once so fragile and so indispensable for fruitful academic labor. One need only to refer to the address of T.H. Huxley at the opening of Johns Hopkins University.
"In a university knowledge is its own end, not merely a means to an end. A university ceases to be true to its own nature if it becomes the tool of church or state or any sectional interest. A university is characterized by the spirit of free inquiry, its ideal being the ideal of Socrates -- 'to follow the argument where it leads.' This implies the right to examine, question, modify or reject traditional ideas and beliefs. Dogma and hypothesis are incompatible, and the concept of an immutable doctrine is repugnant to the spirit of a university. The concern of its scholars is not merely to add and revise facts in relation to an accepted framework, but to be ever examining and modifying the framework itself."
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