Volume 4 No 1 - Journal for the Study of Antisemitism

2012] THE EXPULSION OF ROBERT BURKE 111
President Butler and Dean Hawkes each took a parting slap at Robert
Burke when the administration issued its annual report to the trustees at the
end of 1936. Butler declared that Columbia gave high priority to imparting
to students the qualities “of an educated American gentleman.” He emphasized
that “character, conduct, and sound mental habits come first; [transmitting]
information . . . is subordinate to them.” In the college dean’s
section of the report, Hawkes, in a transparent reference to Burke, declared:
“If after entering college it turns out that the student is so completely oblivious
to what constitutes decent behavior as not only to be . . . hopelessly
unmannerly, but to glory in his shame, he may be said to have failed in
conduct.” 69
Butler and Hawkes’ understanding of character excluded the righteous
who challenged the most barbaric regime in human history. Their view of
character did not include those who chose to act honorably and confront
Nazism, at great risk. Instead, their administration identified as men of
character those who remained indifferent to the Hitler regime’s atrocities, or
were even complicit in them, as Hans Luther was.
Robert Burke devoted the next three decades of his life to the labor
movement. He had charge of the SWOC’s effort at Youngstown’s Republic
11:00 p.m. during a shift change. One of Burke’s assailants was believed to be a
Republic company policeman in plainclothes.
69. “Report of the President of Columbia University” and “Columbia College,
Report of the Dean for the Academic Year Ending June 30, 1936” in the Annual
Report of the President and Treasurer to the Trustees with Accompanying Documents
for the Year Ending June 30, 1936 (Columbia University in the City of New
York, 1936), 29, 64. Butler again justified sending a Columbia delegate to the University
of Heidelberg’s 550th anniversary celebration in his annual report. He
insisted that the Nazis had made no effort at Heidelberg to turn the festivities into
“a political demonstration.” Butler conceded that Reich education minister Bernhard
Rust made what he called a “partisan speech,” but claimed it was the only
departure from the “dignity of the occasion.” Butler maintained that an address
similar to Rust’s could have been delivered “in any country and at any celebration,
academic or other.” He strongly condemned boycotting Nazi Germany’s universities.
“Report of the President,” 25.
The Spectator lashed out at Butler’s insistence that he had been right to send a
delegate to Heidelberg in an editorial entitled “Ein, Zwei, Drei, Heil!” It quoted
New York Times articles and an editorial published during the Heidelberg festival
that consistently described it as a Nazi propaganda exercise. The Times’s reporters
noted how the Propaganda Ministry dominated the celebration; the paper had editorialized
on the festival’s third day that “Heidelberg [University] is Nazi through
and through . . . Nazi in the deliberate distorting of science, art, and philosophy to
conform with the narrow ideology of fascism.” Columbia Spectator, January 4,
1937; The New York Times, June 28-30, 1936.
Butler served as president of Columbia from 1902 to 1945 and died in 1947.