Part 1 - The Institute Libraries - Institute for Advanced Study

that alone -- not on the basis of length of service or prior-
ity of appointment -- his salary my be increased should the
Director rec-nd and the Bozrd approve. Shculd the Board
adopt my view and authorize the appointment of two persons
as a small nucleus for a school of humnistic studies, I
should suggest that their salsries be no higher than they ere
in the institutions with which they have been connected...I
should hope...that if justified by their usefulness they
might expect, as the resources...permit, to be gradually and
eventually elevated to the standard upon which the Institute
began. l7
The Director then warned the Board that land and buildings
shculd not be allowed to compete for funds needed to bring "brains" to
the Institute:
I shall not in this report anticipate what the Cmittee LG
Buildings and ~rounds7 has to say, but I wish to restate my
conviction that the Teal greatness of the Institute depends
and will forever depend not upon buildings but upon brains.
Fine Hall is in excellent illustration of what can be accom-
plished through the establishment of a conmrunal life, which
does indeed require a separate building. But the several
schools need not all be erected upon a single plot, ar-d, if
necessary, over a preliminary period of years satisfactory
results ray be obtained in rented quarters...Like the Johns
Ho?kins University in its glory, the Institute for Advanced
Study may flourish in any sort of buildings...provided each
school as established has issembled a group of men comparable
with those who have already been brought together.18
With the conclusion that the Board should support "conservative
leadership," the Trustees approved the start of the third School and the
two appointments, although it appeared that even with Mr. Straus recorded
at his request as abstaining, the vote was not otherwise unanimous. 19
The debate seriously disturbed Flexner. He spent the next day
intervieving possible sources of endovment in N w York, informing Messrs.
Bamberger and Straus of the fact. Straus wzs obdurate; he still could
not see that Flexner had not prejudiced the wrk in economics, in which
most universities were doing badly, he said. Somewhat surprisingly Flexner