Part 1 - The Institute Libraries - Institute for Advanced Study

enormously better than anyone who is likely to succeed him
in his present job...
I am sure my colleagues, as well as myself, would be de-
lighted if you would drop off in Princeton some day and look
us over in our lair. 60
Flexner was as good as his word; he refused to be nominated
at the annual meting if Frankfurter were also to be. Mr. Aydelotte
undertook for the Cmittee on Nominations the difficult task of meet-
ing and discussing the ratter with Mr. Frankfurter, who was conscious
of no error in his conduct. Finally, after review by the Cormittee of
a kind of brief filed with them by Frankfurter, the Conanittee unanimously
nminated for re-election only Messrs. Flexner and Straus, and the Hem-
bers of the Corporation approved the report. For a time after that it
eppeared that Mr. Frankfurter believed that he had some cause for legal
action against the Comnittee or the Board, but he finally accepted the
decision. 61
The first public announcement of the appointments in the second
School was made in January 1935. It evoked the following notice in the
Princetonian:
Already the School of bthemtics, drawing so heavily from
Princeton's Department, has borne rich fruit, and this
comnity's position as perhaps the greatest center of
mathematical study upon the American continent is rendered
even more impregnable. And the same procedure, we hope.
bids fair to repeat itself in the case of the social sciences.
The proposed School will attempt a 're-examination of politi-
cal and economic theory,' and 'with absolute freedom of thought,
opinion and expression, study the economic and political phe-
nomena of our own times.' In this time, when in so many
countries the heavy hand of arbitrary censorship is crushing
the impetus for free thought and untrannneled investigation,
such a reaffimtion of academic freedom is a welcome note.
And certainly, in this period of economic change, when so
much that we formerly accepted upon blind faith as the truth
is being upset, a re-examination of political and economic
theory is very mch in order... 62