Cornell Alumni News - eCommons@Cornell - Cornell University

Qornell
zAlumni
Howard A. Stevenson '19 Editor Emeritus
May, 1967
VOLUME 69, NUMBER 10
An independent magazine owned and
published by the Cornell Alumni Association
under the direction of its Publications
Committee: Thomas B. Haire '34,
chairman; Birge W. Kinne '16, Clifford
S. Bailey '18, Howard A. Stevenson '19,
and John E. Slater, Jr. '43. Officers of
the Cornell Alumni Association: Charles
J. Blanford '35, Scarsdale, N.Y., president;
Hunt Bradley '26, Ithaca, N.Y.
secretary-treasurer.
John Marcham '50, editor; Charles S.
Williams '44, managing editor; Mrs.
Tommie Bryant, and Mrs. Elise Hancock,
assistant editors.
Editorial and business offices at Alumni
House, 626 Thurston Avenue, Ithaca,
New York 14850.
Issued monthly except August. Subscriptions,
$6 a year in U.S. and possessions;
foreign, $6.75. Subscriptions are renewed
annually unless cancelled. Second-class
postage paid at Ithaca, N. Y., and at
additonal mailing offices.
Printed by Hildreth Press, Inc., Bristol,
Connecticut. Sixty cents a copy. All publication
rights reserved.
Member, American Alumni Council and
Ivy League Alumni Magazines, 22 Washington
Square, North, New York, New
York 10011; GRamercy 5-2039.
Form 3579 should be sent to Cornell
Alumni News, 626 Thurston Ave., Ithaca,
N.Y. 14850.
Cover
Professor Antonie W. Blackler, zoology,
and technician Carol J. Altemus '65 work
with a tankful of leopard frogs in a
study to determine the origin and role
of sex cells in animals. At right, he prepares
to separate eggs before altering.
May 1967
Criticism
From
The Right
• For some eight years now, an energetic
alumnus of Cornell has been making
a persistent effort to influence alumni
and the university. The alumnus is
J. Daniel Tuller '09 of Red Bank, New
Jersey, and Delray Beach, Florida.
A writer in his employ explains:
Tuller . . . has long been concerned that
only the liberal point of view was being
taught at most of the colleges and universities
in the United States. He formed the
Tuller Foundation in 1959 to devote full
time to arousing concern about this situation
and has since been attempting to
find a method of convincing the colleges
that they have an obligation to see that
students are exposed to all major points of
view. His conviction was that ... as college
faculties in the humane studies were largely
instructing or encouraging students in the
point of view of ever larger government
control and regulation of the economy and
society, they had a responsibility to see
that the students had equal exposure to
the other side of these questions, the free
market-limited government point of view.
For eight years, working through the
Tuller Foundation, Tuller explored the
scope and extent of this Liberal imbalance
with many Cornell alumni . . .
Eventually a sizeable group of Cornell
alumni with whom he had been carrying
on long and detailed correspondence agreed
that if they were successfully to take their
concern before the Cornell community, it
would be necessary to create an organization
and publicly express this concern. This
was accomplished by the formation of the
Cornell Alumni Committee for Balanced
Education in 1965.
Originally the committee consisted of
those alumni who had been meeting and
Sol Goldberg '46, Cornell University
corresponding with Tuller through the
Foundation. Shortly, however, they began to
approach other alumni who had expressed
concern over the situation. It was felt that
selection of members should be from
among those alumni who had a record of
long involvement and dedication to Cornell;
and so the vast majority of the members
of CACBE have been members of the
Cornell University Council, and a sizeable
number are past or present trustees. Presently
the active membership numbers
about 70.
In addition to the seventy alumni
members reported by the committee it
has nineteen non-Cornellian "unofficial
members" with whom it keeps in touch,
including three college presidents, two
"heads of other institutions of higher
learning," and three officers of the Winds
of Freedom Foundation, an organization
of Stanford University alumni somewhat
similar to CACBE.
The prime activity of Tuller since
1959 has been the mailing to selected
alumni of a series of more than 500
letters and reprints of other material, at
first on his own letterhead and since
1965 on the CACBE letterhead. He carries
the title of executive vice president;
the committee has no other officer. Tuller
keeps an Executive Committee of five
alumni in close touch with new ideas
for activity.
Since its formation in mid-1965,
CACBE has run a series of small ads in
the Cornell Daily Sun, setting forth its
criticism of the faculty at Cornell and
other institutions, and calling for an alternative
of some sort. In February 1966
the committee launched a contest with
prizes of $500, $300, and $100 "for the
best student essays stating the 'case
against the current practice and tendency
in American colleges and universities of
failing to provide for the benefit of their
students, courses, faculties and facilities
for instruction and exposition in the economic
and governmental philosophy of
free markets and limited government'."
Essays were received, prizes awarded,
and entries serialized in the committee's
ads in the Sun. Reporting on the results,
CACBE said, "The committee feels that
the results of the contest were significant
in that they demonstrated publicly that
at least some of the present undergraduates
and graduate students were aware
of the existence of the imbalance in their
instruction and were concerned about it.
The committee felt that it was necessary
to demonstrate this in order to answer
criticism that it was only conservative
alumni who were unhappy with the situation."
In several other ways, Tuller has
sought to advance his ideas. For a num-