James McKeen Cattell, Nicholas Murray Butler, and Academic ...

History of Psychology
2009, Vol. 12, No. 2, 87–122
JAMES MCKEEN CATTELL, NICHOLAS MURRAY
BUTLER, AND ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT
COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1902–1923
Michael M. Sokal
Worcester Polytechnic Institute (Emeritus)
© 2009 American Psychological Association
1093-4510/09/$12.00 DOI: 10.1037/a0016143
Since James McKeen Cattell’s summary dismissal from Columbia University in
1917, scholars have portrayed him as a martyr to the cause of academic freedom.
Contrarily, this article argues that, for many years, Cattell’s actions threatened and
even undermined his colleagues’ academic freedom much more seriously than
Columbia’s dismissal violated his. To support this historical thesis, this article—
based on extensive archival research—presents a “thick description” of “the fine
texture of the past”: specifically, a highly detailed narrative tracing both Cattell’s
increasingly unpleasant and damaging interactions with his Columbia colleagues
and many aspects of the aftermath of his dismissal. It further claims that this
historical approach suits this episode especially well, as it was the accumulation of
these many instances of Cattell’s continuing injurious behavior that actually led to
his dismissal. This article also concludes that individual personalities were in this
case among the major contingencies that help shaped the course of events at
Columbia.
Keywords: history of psychology, James McKeen Cattell, academic freedom,
history of higher education, Nicholas Murray Butler
On October 1, 1917, James McKeen Cattell—one of the founders of American
psychology, who had taught since 1891 at Columbia University—was
summarily dismissed from his professorship at the age of 57, officially because he
opposed United States conscription policy. Since then, psychologists and historians
of psychology and students of American higher education have honored
Cattell as one of America’s first martyrs to academic freedom and have berated
Nicholas Murray Butler, the renown (and notorious) President of Columbia
who dismissed him. 1 As the analysis that follows argues, however, these portrayals
greatly oversimplify both the episode itself and the roles of its two main
protagonists. More specifically, this article argues that, for many years, Cattell’s
Michael M. Sokal is the Founding Editor of History of Psychology and a former President of
the History of Science Society. This paper was first presented (and dedicated to the author’s
then-72-hour-old granddaughter Cecilia Leslie Groves) as the Wallace A. Russell Lecture at the
August, 2001 Meeting of the Division of the History of Psychology of the American Psychological
Association (now the Society for the History of Psychology), San Francisco, CA. Later versions
were presented as an invited guest lecture at the August 2003 meeting of the European Society for
the History of the Human Sciences, York, England, and before the History & Philosophy of Science
Section of the New York Academy of Sciences, New York, NY, April 2004. Comments from
auditors, from 3 anonymous referees, and especially from History of Psychology’s current editor,
James H. Capshew (to whom the author owes much), have helped him avoid errors, refine this
article’s thesis, and clarify its presentation. The author accepts sole responsibility for all remaining
errors of detail and logic and presentation.
Correspondence concerning this article should be addressed to Michael M. Sokal, 10 Burgess
Road, Worcester, MA 01609. E-mail: msokal@wpi.edu
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actions threatened and even undermined his colleagues’ academic freedom much
more seriously than Columbia’s dismissal violated his.
Of course, the concept of academic freedom has itself evolved—initially from
German notions of Lehrfreiheit (freedom to teach) and Lernfreiheit (freedom to
study)—since it emerged in the United States at the same time as the American
university system in the late 19th century. 2 More than a century later, lawyers,
philosophers, and others continue to debate the notion’s epistemological roots and
to explicate its meaning. They have delineated individual and institutional forms
of academic freedom, have distinguished between its professional and its constitutional
definitions, and have offered (like relativity physicists) general theories
and special theories of the concept, and some even question whether the overarching
notion carries any weight in a postmodern world. 3
To focus on the past, however—and specifically on the years immediately
preceding Cattell’s dismissal—by 1915, as the American Association of University
Professors (AAUP) emerged, a consensus seemed to coalesce that academic
freedom “comprise[d] three elements: freedom of inquiry and research, freedom
of teaching within the university or college, and freedom of extramural utterance
and action.” 4 To secure these freedoms, the newly formed AAUP offered a
“Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure” that
included a set of “Practical Proposals.” These dealt primarily with grounds and
procedures for the orderly discipline and dismissal of professors, presented under
such headings as “Definitions of Tenure in Office,” “Formulation of Grounds for
Dismissal,” and “Judicial Hearings Before Dismissal.” 5 At least one late 20thcentury
critic has argued persuasively that the AAUP’s “Declaration” and the
Association’s later actions embodied—more than anything else—an attempt “to
gain compliance for procedural safeguards from university officials,” largely to
achieve “job security” for professors; 6 that is, primarily to avoid their arbitrary
dismissal. As this critic well demonstrates, early 20th-century professors throughout
the country—and not just at Columbia—had cause to fear such arbitrary
dismissal.
This article presents its analysis within the contemporaneous context of this
“Declaration” and its embodied primary goal and, in doing so, it certainly does not
seek to defend Butler, who had (as it will show) no qualms about dismissing from
Columbia’s faculty those who disagreed with him. 7 He also seemed almost to
enjoy harassing their academic freedom in other ways. Indeed, as this article will
show, from just about the start of Butler’s administration, many of his Columbia
contemporaries had good cause to criticize his (and the university’s trustees’)
notions of academic freedom, even (and perhaps especially) from an early
20th-century perspective.
That said, this article argues that Cattell’s actions—an account of which
makes up the bulk of the detailed narrative that follows—proved almost as
destructive of academic freedom at Columbia as Butler’s. Indeed, and perhaps
more importantly, it also argues that Cattell’s colleagues well recognized that he
actively (if probably inadvertently) sabotaged their self-proclaimed interests. In part,
Cattell’s actions undermined their academic freedom by increasing the Columbia
trustees’ vigilance of all faculty activity. That is, as New York newspapers highlighted
Cattell’s antics at Columbia, the trustees saw that he embarrassed the university before
the public and, especially, in the eyes of Columbia’s alumni. They gradually

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1902–1923
concluded they had to defend the university’s reputation from Cattell, and from all
professors who acted even vaguely as he did. Thus, they began to pay closer
attention to other faculty activity that previously would have seemed to them
innocuous but that—once they had been sensitized by Cattell—seemed at least
dubious. 8 For these reasons, at least some of Cattell’s Columbia colleagues grew
to fear that he had brought unwarranted attention to their actions, and this
attention may have had a chilling effect (to use a mid 20th-century term for an
older phenomenon) on their own behavior. 9
More notably, however, they recognized that Cattell’s actions enabled (and
provided a rationale for) Butler (and the university’s trustees) to dismiss professors
at will and act in other dictatorial ways. Years before Cattell took the action
that allegedly led to his dismissal, two Columbia professors tried to warn him that
his behavior “ma[d]e a joke of the subject of academic freedom” and “set back the
cause of academic freedom about a generation.” 10 Another long-time colleague
who had worked closely with Cattell compared defending his academic freedom
with “trying to secure the abolition of capital punishment on the case of a culprit
who ought to be hanged.” 11 One of his staunchest defenders at Columbia wrote to
him that, “instead of helping the principle of academic freedom, you have done
more than anyone else to discredit that principle.” 12 Many beyond Columbia
agreed. For example, after his dismissal, a New-York Tribune editorial recognized
that “the larger question of academic freedom . . . was not involved in Professor
Cattell’s case”. . . and that “distortion of the particular issue [at hand] can only
hinder, not aid, the larger cause of academic freedom.” 13
This article argues its thesis through an exhaustive “thick description” of “the
fine texture of the past” in one specific setting, and traces in some detail the
escalating course of events over the period of almost two decades that gradually
led to, and followed upon, the events of that October over 90 years ago. That
is—even as historians know the value of concision—analyses of the interplay of
individuals over time often profit from close attention to all aspects of their
evolving attitudes and actions, especially when such a focus leads to revised
interpretations. More generally, such an approach frequently furnishes insights
about the otherwise obscure impact of trivial-seeming contingencies of the past. 14
James McKeen Cattell: Achievement, Character, and Beliefs
Most readers of History of Psychology well recognize Cattell’s significance as
a psychologist and, more importantly, as an American scientist. 15 After all, simply
to list all that Cattell did in launching American psychology as an academic
science and as a profession and in promoting American science at large would
double the length of this article. Suffice it to note that Cattell’s American
colleagues widely praised (and followed the lead of) his early studies for demonstrating
the value of measuring a subject’s behavior, and credited him for
piquing their interests—through testing program of the 1890s and through his
1904 statement on “The Conceptions and Methods of Psychology”—in an applicable
psychology. 16 More generally, at the height of his career in the early 20th
century, Cattell owned and edited such major journals as The Psychological
Review, and Science, and The Popular Science Monthly, and The American
Naturalist, and School and Society, and The Scientific Monthly, and issued
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successive editions of the American Men of Science directories, and for many
years controlled the affairs of the American Association for the Advancement of
Science (AAAS). 17
Scholarship on Cattell’s life and career over the past 30 years has emphasized
his achievements. However, it has also shown that he often exhibited a selfrighteous
egotism that led him to expect others to defer to his views. Cattell never
hesitated to act on his self-righteousness. Indeed, as he told a fellow psychologist
in 1903, he never “object[ed] to a fight in a good cause” and he always “regard[ed]
any cause for which [he] did fight as good.” 18 To Cattell, all was black or white,
and he always knew which was which.
This attitude (and actions that expressed it) often alienated those around him,
and in many ways they limited (and at times even overshadowed) his accomplishments.
Previous scholarship has offered a range of interpretations for his
attitudes and behavior, relating them always to his status as the eldest son of close
and wealthy family. Before audiences of humanists, Cattell has been compared
with Anson Hunter, the fictional protagonist of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s, 1922 story,
“The Rich Boy,” who found that his friends’ parents “were vaguely excited when
their own children were asked to [his] house,” and even as a child he noticed “the
half-grudging American deference that was paid to him.” 19 Cattell experienced
much the same attention—both within his family and from his friends’ parents—
and like any child raised within a given setting, he took it for granted. Instead, he
grew to expect this deference as his due. Like Anson Hunter, Cattell “accepted
this as the natural state of affairs” and thus developed “a sort of impatience with
all groups of which he was not the center . . . which remained with him for the rest
of his life.” Before audiences of psychologists, however, analogous studies have
cited early 21st-century clinicians’ readings of Cattell’s character informed by
DSM–IV classification criteria, which lead directly to a diagnosis of Narcissistic
Personality Disorder. 20 To be sure, in 1917 Cattell’s Columbia colleagues could
not consult the DSM–IV. However, one of them reported that Cattell “has no
appreciation . . . of the other side of any question” and that he “lack[ed] imaginative
sympathy enough to put himself in another man’s shoes.” 21 Another
emphasized that he had not “the least conception of how his actions strike other
people.” 22 This article starts from these portrayals of Cattell’s character, and
traces just how these traits helped shape the course of events on which it focuses.
In particular, the following analysis emphasizes just how Cattell’s character
meshed with three specific sets of his beliefs. The first, a vague commitment to
Socialist ideas, has not had much attention from either historians or psychologists.
It emerged in the mid 1880s when, as a student at the University of Leipzig,
Cattell met leaders of the German Socialist Party. However, his experiences as a
rich young man always tempered this attraction, as he then wrote, “I should be a
socialist if the company were not so bad.” 23 Years later this tempering led him to
argue that once the members of any organization (such as the AAAS) elected its
officers they should defer to them. 24 This mix of populist rhetoric and the
expectation of personal deference continually colored Cattell’s view of the world.
And through the 20th century’s first decades—when Socialists often ran serious
political campaigns, especially in New York—Cattell privately supported several
Socialist candidates. 25 More publicly, in 1912 he published “A Program of
Radical Democracy” that called for confiscatory inheritance taxes; progressive

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1902–1923
taxes on real and personal property; conversion of armies and navies into public
service corps; universal suffrage, with parents casting their children’s votes; and
free health services, old-age and disability pensions, and child subsidies. 26 The
program received little notice at the time, in part because Cattell was then
attracting public attention for other reasons. His Socialist leanings emerged
publicly only gradually in the years that followed, and most clearly only late in
1917, as he responded to his dismissal.
On the other hand, historians have come to realize Cattell’s dedication to the
centrality of family life and how this commitment led to his support for positive
eugenics. As noted, Cattell grew up in an exceptionally close family and as he and
his wife tried to replicate this experience they “home-schooled” their own seven
children. For their own part, psychologists have long known of his admiration for
Francis Galton, 27 who coined the term eugenics. However, unlike most American
eugenicists—who promoted such negative eugenic programs as sterilization and
immigration restriction—Cattell condemned this point of view and denounced
such studies as Henry Goddard’s analyses of the Kallikak family. 28 Instead, for
example, Cattell criticized such educational policies as those requiring women
school teachers to remain unmarried. These practices, he argued, stopped many of
the nation’s best educated women from reproducing and passing on their talents
to their children, and also prevented them from serving as “role models” for the
bright young girls they taught. 29 Within his family, he offered his children $1,000
each if they would marry the child of another college professor. 30 Even more
personally, he and his wife never practiced birth control and in his analyses of
“families of American men of science” and their declining birth rates, and
elsewhere, he derided the social forces that led others to limit the size of their
families. 31 (No wonder he also expressed continually concerns about population
decline, 32 and his “program for radical democracy” called for child subsidies.) In
many ways, as the following analysis shows, Cattell’s concern for positive
eugenics led directly to the specific act that in turn led just as directly to
Columbia’s stated justification for his firing.
Cattell’s long-standing support for faculty control of higher education has
long drawn even more historical attention. For many years, he sharply criticized
professional academic administrators (like Butler) and, going further, he berated
the businessmen who controlled universities’ board of trustees without knowing
anything about education. In part, this attitude simply expanded Cattell’s expectation
of deference from the individual professor to the professoriate at large.
However, it also derived from his experience with the governance of the Presbyterian
Church, of which his father was a Minister. That is, even 150 years ago
individual Presbyterian laymen played major roles in the governance of their local
congregations, which in turn shaped the policies of larger synods. 33 Cattell’s
father also served as President of Lafayette College from 1863 through 1883, and
though some of President Cattell’s faculty colleagues criticized his administration
his son later idealized his father’s leadership. Cattell’s experience at the University
of Leipzig—where professors annually elected one of their own to serve a
1-year rotating term as their Rector—reinforced these attitudes. Cattell strongly
endorsed that practice 34 (though he ignored the major influence of state ministries
of education) and he often argued self-righteously against those who disagreed.
This attitude helped shape—and at times limited the positive impact of—his
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actions as a leader of the AAAS and his calls for what he viewed as a democratic
governance structure still dominate that organization. 35
As noted, long before the events of 1917 Cattell had emerged as a spokesman
for faculty governance of higher education and, as a corollary, for the freedom of
professors to speak as citizens outside the classroom. From the 1890s Science
regularly reported incidents of administrative despotism and restrictions of academic
freedom, 36 and in 1906 he published a five-part plan for “University
Control,” which embodied his long-held views on the proper roles of university
trustees, presidents, and faculty. 37 As professors throughout the nation learned of
his views they often wrote to him with tales of woe. 38 They also invited him to
address the topic before such audiences as Phi Beta Kappa at Johns Hopkins, and
the Harvard Teachers Association, and the Religious Educational Association,
and the faculties of Lafayette College and Lehigh University, and the University
of Illinois University Senate. He often published these talks and other analyses in
his journals 39 and although his views at times attracted negative attention, 40 other
magazines—for example, the well-respected Independent—commissioned him to
write articles on such topics as “The University and Business Methods.” 41 By
1910, his views had become so well known that science journalist Edwin E.
Slosson predicted that the foundation of any new university would be greeted “by
an editorial note [in Science] expressing the hope that the management of the new
institution would be in the hands of its faculty, instead of its president.” 42
Cattell and Butler: The Evolution of Their Antipathy
But Cattell’s support for faculty governance emerged most naturally at
Columbia, as he regularly feuded with Butler. To be sure, many were optimistic
for Butler when he became President in 1902, and not long afterward his
“extraordinary array of talents” led Teddy Roosevelt to dub him “Nicholas
Miraculous.” 43 Cattell and Butler had taught together through the previous decade
and Cattell also expected much. 44 But Butler was a pompous man who enjoyed
power and as he grew into his presidency he left behind his scholarship in
philosophy, which had never been his forte. From 1902 to America’s entry into
World War I, the university averaged over $2 million a year in donations, 45 and
by 1910, his “nonchalance and efficiency” as president led to comparisons with
“the head of a railroad system or a department store.” 46 He soon identified more
with Columbia’s trustees than he ever had with its professors, something that
especially irked Cattell. In 1912, Butler stood as a candidate for the U.S. vice
presidency, as W. H. Taft’s nominal running mate. 47 And in 1920 he actively
sought the Republican presidential nomination. 48 But as he remained at Columbia’s
helm through 1945 many New Yorkers began joking about his stuffiness and
conceit. In the 1930s, for example, one newspaperman sketched a plan to assign
auditorium seats at a Carnegie Hall concert so that bald heads, when seen from the
upper balconies, would spell out the word shit. More specifically, the plan called
for Butler’s bald head to be the dot on the letter I. 49 The evolution of Butler’s
arrogance thus paralleled that of Cattell’s growing commitment to his own
attitudes, and the resulting tensions between the two strong-willed men thus
continually escalated. This escalation provides a running theme throughout this
article.

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1902–1923
Before 1910 Cattell and Butler battled over many and varied issues, including
the ties between the departments of philosophy and of psychology, 50 the relations
between the faculty of Columbia College and that of the rest of the university, 51
the scheduling of sabbatical leaves, 52 the appointment of Deans, 53 the level of
Columbia salaries, especially for junior faculty, 54 the payment of salaries, 55 and
most other aspects of university governance. 56 Others besides Cattell clashed with
Butler on all of these matters, as in many of his actions Butler seemed to take
pleasure in harassing the university’s faculty. Columbia salaries under Butler were
notoriously low, especially in view of New York’s high cost of living. 57 But even
as many (though not all) of Cattell’s colleagues shared his opinions of Butler and
his administration, 58 many gradually came to dislike Cattell’s style of debate.
They soon grew angry (or at least bored) with the “Memorandum”s on divisive
issues that he seemed to circulate every few months. They described him as
“difficult” and “disagreeable” 59 and they especially resented when he urged them
(as he often did) to reconsider votes on this or that matter when a decision went
against him. Cattell’s statements often contained excerpts of his private correspondence
with Butler and with others, a practice that Cattell defended by
claiming that English academics often circulated such “fly leafs” among their
colleagues, 60 and this seems at times to have tried his colleagues’ patience. But
before about 1907, Butler usually tolerated Cattell’s actions, even as he regularly
disagreed with Cattell’s view of things, perhaps in part because Cattell never
challenged his social status.
Butler even seemed willing to put up with the sarcastic and at times nasty tone
of Cattell’s statements. To be sure, when Cattell wrote in 1907—in debating the
relations between the college faculty and the university faculty—that “we are so
used to the idea of a paternal president who takes care of us all that there seems
to be a certain lack of loyalty in questioning his plans for welfare,” Butler asked
Cattell to cease their correspondence because “you appear to be in a contentious
rather than a helpful frame of mind.” 61 Even so, a few months later, in response
to one of Cattell’s fly leafs, Butler wrote to him that “nearly every statement that
you make regarding myself or my proposals and suggestions . . . varies in
important details from the recorded facts.” 62 And a few years later, after Cattell
wrote to Butler that “your suggestion that the ‘severe tasks’ of university professors
should not be interrupted by concerns for university administration is reminiscent
of the doctrine that the people should be humble and word hard and leave
it to the King and his Lords to care for them,” 63 Butler apparently didn’t even
reply. To others he described Cattell’s comments as “tart.” However, he also
found them “not very persuasive in character” and noted that, “Cattell is chronically
opposed nowadays to anything that anybody does.” 64 In many ways, then,
even before 1910 Cattell’s actions seem to have hurt (rather than to have helped)
his causes.
Cattell and Butler: Escalating Tensions
In mid-1910, however, a train of events began that sharply escalated tensions
between the two men. On May 25th, his 50th birthday, Cattell circulated at
Columbia a “Memorandum Concerning our Scientific Departments” 65 that argued
that, in terms of the scientific stature of its faculty, Columbia had “fallen behind
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Harvard, Yale, Chicago, and Johns Hopkins, and [we] are in danger of falling
behind lesser institutions.” He criticized Butler’s leadership and blamed this
decline largely on “the bureaucratic system by which nearly everything is done by
the president with or without consultation,” a practice that he said discouraged
“able and independent men” and described as “subversive to academic freedom.”
Cattell cited data based on membership in the National Academy of Sciences to
support his claim. However, this memo seems to have attracted little faculty
support, and Butler apparently took little immediate notice of it.
About a month later, the eminent Columbia Latinist Harry Thurston Peck was
sued by a female former employee for breach of promise. New York tabloids soon
printed Peck’s flirtatious letters and soon thereafter the university dismissed
him. 66 Peck denied the charges, and Cattell leapt to his defense, 67 and he
denounced Butler’s authoritarian action and the injustice of dismissing an apparently
innocent man. It gradually became clear, however, that Peck did write the
letters in question and Cattell—always devoted to the integrity of families—
withdrew his support. 68 But Peck soon opened a public counterattack. He publicly
denouncing Butler’s autocracy, and, in claiming to be part of Columbia’s “insurgent”
faction, cited specifics from Cattell’s “Memorandum.” Soon thereafter, New
York newspapers—both tabloid and broadsheet—published long excerpts from
this document. 69 The details of the Cattell’s attacks on Butler thus became public,
and their dispute reached a new level.
Cattell claimed that the public disclosure of his memo embarrassed him as
much as it did Butler and Columbia 70 But his actions the following November
suggest otherwise. Cattell then published both the second edition of American
Men of Science and his statistical analyses of its data, 71 based on the eminence
ratings of those included in the volume. In the 1906 first edition, Cattell starred the
entries of the 1,000 most highly rated scientists, and in 1910 he compared the
traits of newly “starred” scientists with the 1906 cohort. He stressed their
geographical and institutional distribution, and thus presented what have been
called the first published quality ratings of American universities. 72 In addition, he
used these data to attack Butler’s presidency, arguing that “Columbia and California,
in which faculty control is regarded . . . as less important than executive
efficiency, have suffered the most serious losses, whereas Harvard and Yale,
where the methods of appointment and promotion are more democratic, show
most gratifying advances” (p. 677). Privately, other Columbia professors spoke
well of his analyses. 73 More publicly, however, press attention to these claims
soon swamped even that paid to the salacious aspects of Peck’s case, as the New
York press highlighted Cattell’s criticisms of Columbia 74 and newspapers and
alumni magazines throughout the country used these results to brag about highly
rated universities and to condemn leaders of poorly rated institutions. 75
Matters escalated still further early in 1911, when Butler arbitrarily dismissed
Joel E. Spingarn, a Professor of Comparative Literature, and later an important
figure in the history of the NAACP. 76 Spingarn had resisted plans to merge his
area into the Department of English, and his opposition had long alienated many
of his colleagues. In March 1911, Cattell brought his campaign against Butler to
a new level, and moved at a faculty meeting that his colleagues examine the
“manner of appointment” of professors. 77 Cattell’s motion lost, as English professors
rallied to protect their turf. But the New York press again gave much

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1902–1923
attention to what it called an “insurrection” at Columbia.” 78 Several trustees called
press reports that Cattell led this movement “the most flagrant breach of confidence
and evidence of disloyalty [on his part] which we have yet had,” and they
thus began to establish their legal position with respect to “dismissal” of professors
for “disloyalty and insubordination.” 79 Cattell thus sensitized the trustees to
faculty actions that they had previously ignored, and prepared the way for the
events of 1917.
Cattell kept bickering with Butler in the months that followed, but as he noted
early in 1912 “I have not had much to do with academic matters at Columbia the
present year.” 80 Instead, he broadened his efforts at university reform in two
directions. First, he circulated copies of his 1906 five-part plan for “University
Control” among hundreds of American scientists, asking them for their response
to his suggestions. 81 Second, he prepared a series of articles for Science—all
published under the general heading “University Control”—that expanded his
views on university governance. 82 They often quoted at length from his earlier
articles and talks—for example, from his 1906 five-part plan 83 —and the new
articles publicly exhibited the sarcasm that of his private remarks on the topic. For
example, in discussing “The Corporation and the President,” Cattell told of
“incit[ing] one of [his] children to call her doll Mr. President”— after Butler—“on
the esoteric ground that he would lie in any position in which he was placed.” 84
Although this remark probably brought a chuckle from its audience when Cattell
first made it—apparently at a Johns Hopkins Sigma Xi meeting—it brought
further public attention to Cattell’s disagreements with Butler, and did so in a way
that many of his colleagues viewed as tasteless.
Cattell then expanded his practice of issuing fly leafs and published in Science
almost 300 anonymous responses to his call for comments on his reform plans,
most of which, unsurprisingly, supported his views. 85 He then collected these
articles and letters—and other previously published articles on the subject by
professors with views like his, such as psychologists Joseph Jastrow, George T.
Ladd, and George M. Stratton 86 —in book form, also under the title University
Control. It appeared in March 1913, 87 and in the following months it attracted
much positive press attention from such “liberal” magazines as The Dial and The
Independent and The Nation. The Boston Evening Transcript even praised Cattell’s
criticism of “Czardom in Our Universities.” 88 The publication of this book
apparently helped lead others (with whom he shared his thoughts) to form the
American Association of University Professors. 89 The book’s substance had,
however, little lasting impact until a more gifted academic gadfly, Thorstein
Veblen, built on the material Cattell collected for his own 1918 classic, The
Higher Learning in America. 90
The Loeb Affair and Its Aftermath
The publication of University Control set the stage for Cattell’s next major
confrontation at Columbia, which began in May, 1913. The Century Club—at the
time something of a salon for New York academics and businessmen with
intellectual interests—then blackballed Jacques Loeb, the eminent Rockefeller
Institute physiologist. 91 Cattell and Simon Flexner (the Institute’s Director) had
earlier nominated Loeb for membership and they had had hints that others
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opposed the nomination. Loeb even asked that they withdraw it, 92 but they were
surprised when he was not elected. Loeb’s biographer concludes that Loeb’s
reputation as a Socialist and the personal opposition of two Columbia scientists
led to the rejection. However, he also notes that although the Club had many
Jewish members—Flexner himself had a Jewish background—anti-Semitism
apparently played some role in the club’s actions. Loeb himself was hurt by his
rejection. However, he wanted to forget the incident, and he urged his friends to,
and he proposed the New York Chemists’ Club as an alternative salon. 93
Cattell, however, took Loeb’s rejection personally and he at once sent a fly
leaf to the club’s members charging them with anti-Semitism and antiintellectualism.
94 The national press soon reported the news and some papers
denounced the club for its action. 95 Some New York papers mentioned Cattell’s
role in the incident and (as one of Cattell’s later fly leafs bragged) at least a few
of the club’s members supported his actions. 96 But the publicity embarrassed
many others—including some Columbia trustees and alumni—and led to calls for
his resignation from the club, which he soon submitted. 97 Cattell thus took a
shameful and possibly disgraceful incident, and blew it up in ways that at least
embarrassed those more closely involved. Even though Loeb himself wanted to
put it behind him Cattell could not, 98 as it affronted both his personal expectation
of deference and his professional identity as a scientist. As noted earlier, Cattell
bragged that he never “object[ed] to a fight in a good cause” and that he always
“regard[ed] any cause for which [he] did fight as good.” 99 (Indeed, he soon wrote
to Loeb that he had “no wish to resign . . . I should rather be expelled. 100 )Inany
such fights Cattell never looked for personal benefit. 101 But he also never realized
that his actions could embarrass (or even harm) others. He simply could not
believe that right-thinking people could differ from him.
Even before the press reported the Loeb affair, Columbia trustees discussed
how to deal with Cattell and his antics. Despite the precedents of Peck’s and
Spingarn’s firings, some trustees apparently wished to avoid Cattell’s summary
dismissal, and they seem to have convinced others. As one noted, “whether an axe
or a Samurai sword is used . . . the surgical result [should be] exactly the same.” 102
Early in May, 1913, the board voted that Cattell be retired from Columbia that
June. 103 Cattell would then have taught in America for 25 years, and thus would
be eligible for a pension from the Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of
Teaching (a forerunner of today’s TIAA-CREF system; see below). In 1910, as he
considered his future, Cattell had asked if he would be eligible for such a pension,
and was told he would be. 104 But although he never followed up on this inquiry,
the trustees hoped to take advantage of it and finally get rid of him, and they
announced his forthcoming retirement. The press immediately assumed this action
derived from Cattell’s defense of Loeb—which he and his colleagues all agreed
probably had little to do with it—and began charging the trustees with secondhand
anti-Semitism. 105 Cattell himself did not want to be retired. He wrote a long
letter 106 to the trustees that listed his achievements and defended his actions, but
which gave no indication that he understood why others might not want him to
remain at Columbia.
Many of Cattell’s Columbia colleagues immediately protested the trustees’
action. His closest friends and colleagues—psychologists Edward L. Thorndike
and Robert S. Woodworth and philosophers John Dewey and Frederick J. E.

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1902–1923
Woodbridge—all argued strongly against his forced retirement. 107 To be sure,
they did not try to defend Cattell’s actions, and Thorndike even referred to him as
an “agitator.” But he described Cattell as “the ablest psychologist in America” and
he joined with many other of Cattell’s former students to prepare a Festschrift for
him that demonstrated the impact of his research in psychology. 108 Woodbridge
argued that Cattell’s dismissal would “operate to the serious disadvantage of the
University” and Woodworth claimed that it “would involve a very great loss to the
prestige of the Department and a very great loss in the educational value of our
work to our own advanced students.” Dewey had known Cattell since their
graduate-student days at Johns Hopkins in the early 1880s and in 1904 Cattell had
helped him gain his Columbia professorship, 109 Thorndike and Woodworth both
viewed Cattell as their mentor, and Woodbridge had worked with Cattell in
creating what evolved into the Journal of Philosophy. 110 But even more significantly,
other Columbia professors who disliked him personally and resented his
actions argued that he should not be dismissed. For example, even as engineer
Michael Pupin described Cattell’s “lack of tact,” “unfortunate personal traits,” and
“persistency of a fanatic,” he concluded that “Columbia is big enough to stand a
harmless fanatic who is in several respects a useful . . . worker.” 111
The ongoing incident dominated much faculty conversation at Columbia that
May, and most of Cattell’s colleagues apparently regarded his actions “as indiscreet
and ill-advised.” 112 Late that month biologist Edmund B. Wilson reported to
Butler the sense of one discussion. 113 Wilson and others agreed that Cattell was
“tactless, unreasonable and irritating” and described his “recent activities . . . as
equally and conspicuously characterized by bad judgment and bad taste.” To be
sure, these colleagues also saw Cattell as “able” and “sincere.” But they concluded
that Cattell had “given great provocation to [the trustees’] action,” and
that, even “with the best of intentions [Cattell] often needlessly offends or wounds
even his best friends.” Wilson also made sure to stress that he and his colleagues
were “not in sympathy with [Cattell’s] methods of attack on existing academic
and other institutions.” But he also emphasized that, if Cattell were dismissed,
“rightly or wrongly the whole academic world will, I fear, associate Cattell’s
retirement under the circumstances with the question of academic freedom of
speech and will connect it with the appearance of his book on University Control.”
As Wilson concluded, “until now every intimation, by Cattell or anyone else, that
complete freedom of speech does not exists at Columbia has instantly met its
refutation in the fact that Cattell has retained his chair without protest. That he has
done so seems to me a witness to the greatness of this university, and incidentally
has deprived him of his main weapon.” In the meantime, Woodbridge—who then
served as Dean of Columbia’s three graduate faculties—wrote a gushingly appreciative
letter to Cattell praising his “very great services to the University” and
offering “a very deep appreciation of your friendship.” He also arranged a meeting
between the trustees’ Committee on Education and the faculties’ Joint Committee
on Instruction, which soon concluded that Cattell should not be forcibly retired. 114
Within a month, then, the trustees relented—in large part because of the negative
response to their planned actions—and Cattell kept his professorship. 115 Throughout
the episode he had thanked his friends for their support. However, in doing so he
wrote to several that, “I do not want to be retained as Butler might keep a cook who
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promised not to get drunk again.” 116 He again did not understand why others objected
to his actions.
In the aftermath of this incident, wounds remained on both sides to fester, as
it reinforced Cattell’s views of Butler and of the university’s trustees, and Butler
and the trustees had further reason to get rid of Cattell. To be sure, a 1914 book
by the Dean of Columbia College made Wilson’s claim public by citing Cattell’s
presence at the university as “living proof that we have some academic freedom.”
117 Cattell himself claimed that his actions had the positive effect of leading
the trustees to meet with (and, apparently, listen to) a joint faculty committee. 118
But he again missed the point, as the most immediate impact of the incident was
to decrease Cattell’s stature among his Columbia colleagues, even among those
who supported him. As geneticist, T. H. Morgan confirmed that Cattell’s support
of Loeb “had nothing to do with” the proposed retirement, he regretted that Cattell
had “tangled himself up . . . in a way that will alienate many persons who had a
deep regard for his high principles and courage” and would “seriously impair his
effectiveness as leader.” 119 Indeed, Morgan’s comments reflected more than he
could have known, as Cattell’s behavior further alerted Columbia’s trustees to
faculty action that could be read as evidence of “disloyalty and insubordination.”
It also suggested to them that attempts to sever a professor’s connection with the
university that did not involve arbitrary dismissal were apt to fail. Again, the
trustees did not act immediately. However, the clichéd stage continued to be set
for future action.
The Coming of the War
A year later, with the start of World War I, Cattell’s Popular Science Monthly
began publishing a series of editorial notes that over the next few years attacked
both German militarism (decrying the invasion of Belgium and the Lusitania’s
sinking) and the extremes of allied propaganda. 120 Most immediately, in September
1914, under the title “War and Peace,” the Monthly published a series of
excerpts from relevant articles it had previously reprinted from other sources,
including Andrew Carnegie’s “A League for Peace” and William James’s “The
Moral Equivalent of War.” 121 Cattell’s antiwar position reflected both his Socialist
leanings—his 1912 “Program for Radical Democracy” had called for “the submission
of all international questions to arbitration” (pp. 610–611)—and his
commitment to a positive eugenics. From 1914 Cattell argued that the most
negative effect of the “mad and wanton European war” would be to reduce the
birthrate of all combatant countries. 122 He avoided placing such articles in
Science, which others often identified more with the AAAS than with him.
However, as early as September 1914 the AAASs Permanent Secretary reported
that the first of Cattell’s Monthly articles had led to at least one resignation. 123
Nonetheless, in the months that followed, Cattell’s statements on this issue
gradually became more explicit and emotional—for example, his previously cited
article on “The Diminishing Family” in The Independent closed (on p. 424) by
pleading that “we can do inconceivably more to make the nation strong in
defenses by caring for children than by increasing our armaments”—and even
those who shared his views sensed that he had more than an intellectual commitment
to them.

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1902–1923
Indeed, by the end of 1915 much of Cattell’s activity seemed to reflect a
greater emotional tension than before. He was then 55 years old and the previous
few years had seriously strained his relations with most of his Columbia contemporaries.
He had always edited his journals from his home—an isolated stone
mansion known as “Fort Defiance” about 50 miles north of New York City—and
his editorships had always kept him extremely busy. But in that year he founded
both School and Society (a weekly for teachers analogous to Science) and The
Scientific Monthly (to take the place of The Popular Science Monthly, whose name
he sold), and even as his wife, Josephine Owen Cattell, continued as unacknowledged
Managing Editor for all of his journals, his life became more frenetic than
ever. This busyness kept him away from Columbia’s campus more than ever, and
thus further reduced his contacts with younger colleagues, something that (some
life span developmental psychologists suggest) can lead to tension in men his
age. 124 Most personally, that December his eldest daughter Eleth—probably his
favorite child—died in childbirth at the age of 25. Cattell took the loss hard—a
daughter-in-law once reported that the family rarely thereafter celebrated Christmas
125 —and the resulting bitterness (which others later noted) reinforced the
negative traits that had poisoned his relations with others. 126 Cattell’s internal
state in 1916 thus paralleled the contemporaneous state of affairs in Europe.
As the war continued, many Americans supported “military preparedness,”
and in April 1916 The Scientific Monthly published a AAAS symposium on
“National Defense and Development.” 127 But Cattell used that issue’s editorial
column to marshal many of his previous antiwar arguments. 128 These soon
attracted much greater public attention. As editor of School and Society, Cattell
had long been a member of the National Educational Association (which had not
yet become a labor union) and, though he had not been overly active until 1916,
in July of that year he led an NEA faction denouncing military education as part
of a preparedness campaign. New York newspapers—both tabloid and broadsheet—well
publicized Cattell’s actions and often ridiculed his views. 129 In doing
so, they rarely identified him as a Columbia professor. Nevertheless, those who
followed New York educational news knew who he was. Nevertheless, Cattell
continued to call “For Peace” through the first months of 1917 130 and Loeb and
others wrote favorably of his arguments. 131
Further Tensions at Columbia
Cattell had, however, attracted much more serious criticism at Columbia the
previous May, after the press reported that the noted Columbia historian Charles
A. Beard had approved the comment, “to hell with the flag.” Sensitized by Cattell
to such public embarrassment of the university and responding to potential
“disloyalty and insubordination,” the trustees interrogated Beard, and cleared him
of making the remark. 132 But that they even questioned him about a public
statement distressed many at Columbia. After all, the previous year the AAUP’s
“Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure” had
claimed “freedom of extramural utterance and action” for all professors. The chair
of the AAUP committee that prepared this statement was Edwin R. A. Seligman,
an economics professor in Columbia’s Graduate School of Political Science. 133
He found the trustees’ actions especially disturbing and—as the son of a globally
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prominent banker, so that his social status rivaled Butler’s—he complained
privately to the university’s president about it. As he later reported, Butler then
agreed that “no Professor would again be summoned before the Trustees” without
other “representatives of the Faculty.” 134
Cattell, however, responded as usual to the incident. Without realizing that the
much of the trustees’ own rationale for their inquiry apparently rested on their
earlier responses to his own actions, he circulated a fly leaf at Columbia headed
“In Defense of Academic Freedom.” Among other things it claimed that “it is
better to say to hell with the flag than to take it thither” and he asked his colleagues
if “it would be in the interest of academic freedom” to publish the statement in
School and Society. 135 Of the 25 responses Cattell kept, only one—from philologist
E. H. Sturtivant—urged publication. All others—whether sent by Cattell’s
friends (including Dewey and Thorndike and Woodbridge and Woodworth) or
others—strongly advised against publication. Morgan, who had earlier rued
Cattell’s response to the Loeb affair, wrote simply, “It is not likely to do any good.
It is needlessly offensive. It will harm you if any body.” However, most others
expressed more concern about the statement’s possible negative impact on academic
freedom at Columbia. Even those (like Seligman) who feared the implications
of the trustees’ actions argued that “much harm might ensue” from
publication. Others wrote that Cattell’s note would “make a joke of the subject of
academic freedom” (from George P. Krapp) and would “set back the cause of
academic freedom about a generation” (from William A. Dunning). 136 Cattell took
his colleagues’ advice and did not publish the statement. Nevertheless, he again
did not seem to notice their larger concerns. In particular, they feared the
precedent that would follow if Cattell’s continued harassment led to his arbitrary
dismissal from the university, so they warned him explicitly of their worries.
However, he continued to ignore these warnings, and continued acting as he had
for years, and in the months that followed his relations with his Columbia
colleagues grew still worse.
The next incident that colored the trustees’ sense of Cattell was unrelated to
his antimilitarist views. In January 1917, when Butler announced plans to close
Columbia’s faculty club, Cattell attacked the president in a fly leaf “Confidential
Memorandum” that referred to him as “many talented and much climbing”—
views that many had shared privately—and jokingly urged the club to take over
Butler’s own house. 137 Little came of this remark until March, when several
newspapers published it, 138 and Seligman—who hoped to save academic freedom
at Columbia from Cattell—called some 20 of his colleagues into “hurried consultation.”
139 They all signed a statement explicitly disassociating themselves
from Cattell’s comment. However, they primarily sought to prevent the incident
from escalating further and from leading to any precedent (such as Cattell’s
arbitrary dismissal) that would further erode their academic freedom. Seligman
and two others met with Butler, specifically to prevent any “summary action”
against Cattell. Butler “intimated [to them] that he thought that Professor Cattell’s
usefulness to the University had come to an end.” However, he agreed to refer any
trustee response to the matter to a committee that included faculty members.
Two days later, the Columbia trustees seriously discussed resolutions that
Cattell be suspended, dismissed, or given a chance to resign, and called him to
appear before them. 140 Cattell then sought Dewey’s and Seligman’s advice and

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1902–1923
Seligman immediately reminded Butler that he had earlier spoken against such
imperious subpoenas. 141 Seligman and Dewey thus stood ready to represent
Cattell before the trustees as they sought to avoid the “summary action” and
arbitrary dismissal they feared. However, they also believed that Cattell’s own
behavior threatened the academic freedom he claimed to defend, and they tried to
explain to him just why his colleagues disapproved of it so strongly. Seligman
described him as “blissfully unconscious” that anyone might object to his remarks,
and only after much pressure did Cattell “finally concede the point
ungrudgingly.” In the end, however, the trustees did not call Cattell, and they
referred the resolutions to their new Committee on the State of Teaching in the
University, created largely “to inquire . . . whether doctrines which are subversive
of or tend to the violation or disrespect of the Constitution or laws of the United
States . . . are taught or disseminated by officers of the university.” 142 As American
entry into the war approached the trustees took further steps to ensure the
loyalty of its faculty, and others besides Cattell had opposed preparedness and
similar measures. Many seemed to note, however, that the trustees created the
committee at the same time that Cattell’s faculty colleagues had harshly criticized
him. Moreover, despite the trustees’ committee’s broader charge, its members’
letters emphasize their belief that “Cattell’s connection with the University must
be terminated” and that they looked to the faculty for “their opinion as to the best
method . . . to accomplish that end.” 143
At least a few Columbia professors reacted sharply to the creation of this
committee of the trustees, and Seligman “deeply deplore[d]” it and reported to
AAUP colleagues on other campuses that “active steps . . . are being taken to
undue [sic] the damage [to academic freedom] that has already been caused.” 144
These steps led later that month to a faculty Committee of Nine, appointed to
work with the trustees’ committee, and Seligman and his colleagues congratulated
themselves on the appointment of a body designed to protect faculty interests
before the trustees. 145 Even earlier, however, Cattell’s Columbia colleagues began
expressing more forcefully than ever their concerns about his actions. Most
notably, Woodbridge (then on leave at Berkeley) complained to Seligman (who
acted as graduate dean in his absence) that Cattell “has no right to jeopardize the
interests of the rest of us and our efforts to secure cooperation between the
Trustees and the Faculties by his folly.” 146 He noted that, “for several years
[Cattell] has repeatedly gone out of his way to say insulting and irritating things
about the President and the Trustees” and that, unfortunately, nothing “will make
[Cattell] realize that he is persona non grata, not only to the Trustees, but also to
many of his colleagues.” To be sure, Woodbridge found himself tempted to
“laugh at Cattell and treat him as a fool.” However, he realized that “the matter
cannot simply be brushed aside.” That is, Woodbridge argued, Cattell “puts us in
the embarrassing position where we must either shield his person in the interests
of academic liberty, or do nothing, and if we do nothing we yield absolute
jurisdiction to the Trustees,” something that he and his colleagues were most loath
to do. Indeed, he continued, “no colleague has a right to . . . put us in such a
position.” Woodbridge agreed that Cattell should be retired because “his presence
at the university is unfortunate and a menace.” At the same time, however, he
admitted that “I should dislike to see him retired solely on the motion of the
Trustees.” Woodbridge thus summarized the problem that Cattell embodied that
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faced those at Columbia who wished to defend academic freedom, and he closed
his typed letter with a handwritten postscript, “Can I do anything?”
Seligman presented (and others responded to) the creation of the Committee
of Nine as triumph for faculty interests. No wonder Woodbridge replied to the
news with “elation” and praise for “how splendidly [Seligman had] managed the
whole affair.” 147 Cattell, however, found serious fault with the Committee. Most
of its members were Deans, and Cattell argued that, as one of them, Seligman
should not chair it. Indeed, he charged that “as a man of independent means and
wide influence [Seligman did] not in equal measure feel the danger of subservience
through the suppression of freedom of speech and freedom of action within
the university.” 148 This attack on his defender further angered others. Woodbridge,
for example, called it “not only meanly unjust” but also “an illustration of
his ungenerous and irrational mind.” 149 To be sure, he admitted that Cattell was
probably not “disingenuous.” However, he praised Columbia for supporting “real
freedom of thought and expression” and complained that “Cattell has done
nothing to promote” this reputation, but instead had “done much to destroy it.” In
his view, then, “for many years [Cattell] has injured the University,” and he
repeated that he would like to see Cattell retired. He still admitted that, if the
trustees took “summary action” against Cattell “our position [in support of
academic freedom] will be weakened.” He again concluded that “I do not see how
we can make a good case” for Cattell before the trustees. Dewey and others at
Columbia also took Cattell to task for criticizing Seligman as he had, and warned
him against “say[ing] anything which gives people a handle against you.” 150 But
again, this was the kind of warning Cattell never took seriously.
As the Committee of Nine examined “the conditions of education . . . in the
university,” it reviewed Cattell’s “scientific standing,” and even asked if he spent
enough time on campus to be considered a full-time faculty member. 151 Formal
reports from Woodworth and Thorndike (for the Department of Psychology)
testified that Cattell did devote appropriate attention to his professorship and
proved especially positive, as did a statement signed by members (including many
of Cattell’s critics) of the Faculty of Pure Science. 152 Nevertheless, months before
Cattell took the actions that others have long claimed led to his dismissal, the
Committee formally considered resolutions calling for Cattell’s retirement. Indeed,
only the intercession Dewey—who as a Committee member asked if
“scholars should be retired because of eccentricities”—prevented a vote before
Cattell had a chance to defend himself. 153 The next day a self-described “cold
blooded” letter from Dewey told Cattell that if he did not apologize for his
“invidious personal reference to the President” he would be dismissed. 154
Cattell did express regret at having written his letter and signed a twosentence
a letter of apology prepared by Seligman that the Committee accepted.
(He later reported, with much hyperbole, that “Seligman was much moved” when
he signed the apology, and that he thanked Cattell “again and again with tears in
his voice, and held my hand as long and as close as if I had been his sweetheart.”)
155 An original draft report called for the letter to be sent to those who
received Cattell’s original “Confidential Memorandum” on the Faculty Club and
forwarded to the trustees “for such use as [they] deem wise.” Apparently at
Cattell’s request, however, Dewey moved a “gentlemen’s agreement” for the
removal of these stipulations, to which the Committee apparently agreed, though

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1902–1923
they do appear in the report as published in October 1917. 156 The Committee also
recommended that Cattell not be dismissed, even as at least one of its members—
Samuel Lambert, the Dean of the College of Physicians and Surgeons—
explicitly “had no confidence in Professor Cattell’s refraining from further
outbreaks.” 157 Seligman later claimed that the Committee’s prime achievement
lay in “securely entrench[ing] ourselves as the intermediary between the
Trustees and the Faculties,” 158 and he reported that the trustees had accepted its
recommendation. The trustees did vote to hold their resolution dismissing Cattell
“for further consideration.” 159 Like Lambert, they had no faith that Cattell would
reform.
In the meantime, of course, the United States had entered World War I on
April 6, 1917, and Butler publicly announced that June that he would accept no
dissent from the war effort at Columbia. His specific statements—“What had been
tolerated before becomes intolerable now. What had been wrongheadedness is
now sedition. What had been folly is now treason” 160 — may not have been
specifically aimed at Cattell. After all, as this account has made clear, long before
Butler spoke just about all who worked with Cattell at Columbia—the president,
the trustees, and his faculty colleagues—believed they had good cause, without
reference to his antimilitarist sentiments, to desire (or even to seek) his retirement
or dismissal. Nevertheless, those outside Columbia could (and did) read Butler’s
statement as an implicit warning to Cattell. However, as his colleagues well knew,
Cattell was always oblivious to even much less subtle and much more explicit
warnings.
Family Matters and Their Impact
During his campaign against preparedness Cattell had urged his sons to avoid
military training. However, once the United States entered the war, his eldest son
McKeen—then a graduate student in physiology at Harvard Medical School—
enlisted, and with many of his classmates served in France with the Harvard
Hospital. McKeen’s actions did not seem to disappoint Cattell, who wrote proudly
of his son to his friends. 161 But it made more personal his previous concerns about
the potential impact of the war on future generations.
Unlike McKeen, Cattell’s second son, Owen—then a special student at
Columbia—formed a New York chapter of the nationwide “Collegiate Anti-
Militarism League” and circulated a flyer urging men not to register for the draft.
With others he was arrested on May 31 and charged with conspiracy to induce
others to break the law. H. W. L Dana—a young Columbia Assistant Professor
who later that year was more closely linked to Cattell—posted bail for those
arrested, 162 and soon thereafter Cattell apparently told a U.S. District Attorney
that “the United States was making itself ridiculous” and that he “knew President
Wilson . . . and that [he] was certain that [Wilson] would not approve of the
government’s action.” 163 Cattell also arranged for Morris Hillquit, a leading
American Socialist lawyer and opponent to U.S. entry into the War, to defend
Owen, and offered Hillquit much unsolicited advice. 164 The defense revolved
around the claim that Owen had not actually joined a conspiracy. But even as the
federal jury acquitted the one female defendant, it convicted Owen and the other
male defendant of conspiracy. 165 With the jury’s recommendation of mercy, the
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judge fined each $500, and sentenced both to one day in prison and revoked their
citizenships. 166 The case brought much unfavorable publicity to Cattell and
Columbia, as both local and national newspapers charged the university with
harboring draft dodgers, and all reports noted Cattell’s earlier disputes with Butler
and his antimilitarist statements, which many began to call pacifist. 167 After
Owen’s arrest many of Cattell’s colleagues, including Seligman, wrote to offer
sympathy and even thoughtful legal advice. 168 But the incident reinforced the
belief of others that Columbia had to free itself of Cattell. To be sure, John B.
Pine, an attorney and Clerk of the Columbia Trustees, followed the trial closely
and reported to Butler “that there was nothing whatever in the evidence which
reflected in any way upon the University.” He concluded that “there does not seem
to me to be any ground at the present time for any action on our part in regard to
Professor Cattell.” 169 Even earlier, however, Butler announced that nobody convicted
of conspiracy would ever be granted a Columbia degree. 170 And after the
trial he met with the prosecuting attorney, who explained that “the jury’s verdict
showed clearly that the jurors believed that Professor Cattell was a perjurer.” 171
To be sure, Butler—“who was . . . pleased with the verdict”—may not have
agreed with that specific charge. However, this reading of the verdict could hardly
have worsened Butler’s opinion of Cattell.
About 10 days after Owen’s arrest—as Cattell worked to prepare his son’s
defense, and just a few days after he received Seligman’s frank (and probably
unwanted) advice—Columbia professors received copies of Cattell’s letter of
apology to the Committee of Nine. Cattell had understood that Dewey had
convinced the Committee not to circulate this letter, and even though he had often
circulated copies of others’ letters to him, he immediately responded by charging
Seligman with betraying him. 172 Seligman’s reply—which abandoned the cordial
tone of his previous correspondence—claimed that the Committee had not promised
confidentiality and reported that many of their colleagues had asked “the
Trustees to sever [Cattell’s] connection with the University.” Seligman thus was
“very much afraid” that Cattell did not “even now thoroughly comprehend [the
seriousness of] the situation.” 173 But the situation soon grew even more serious.
Within a week the press published Cattell’s letter of apology, 174 Cattell then
circulated among Columbia professors excerpts of Seligman’s letters to him that
had (according to Seligman) “mutilated” his meaning through deceptive editing.
Thus, he “repudiate[d]” all of Cattell’s charges against him, and reported becoming
“convinced of the impossibility of any useful cooperation” between Cattell
and anyone else at Columbia. Most significantly, Seligman—who had previously
always tried to defend Cattell—closed by spelling out the previously quoted
views that he and many of his colleagues had long held among themselves. “In my
opinion academic freedom has nothing to do with your case. Instead of helping the
principle of academic freedom, you have done more than anyone else to discredit
that principle. I regret to have to come to the conclusion which is shared by not
a few of your colleagues that your usefulness to the University has come to an
end.” 175
Cattell’s attack may have surprised Seligman. He had often defended Cattell,
and he took pride in the creation of the Committee of Nine, and he finally
concluded that Cattell “has [not] the least conception of how his actions strike
other people.” 176 The attack certainly surprised Cattell’s friends. Boas, for exam-

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1902–1923
ple, urged Cattell “not to act [further] on this matter” before consulting them, and
he wrote to Seligman to try to placate him. 177 But the attack did not surprise others
at Columbia, who had suffered from Cattell’s nastiness and lack of empathy for
years. Many wrote to Seligman to commiserate. 178 And on June 18, even before
Owen was convicted, the Committee of Nine reversed its decision of a month
earlier, and voted (in words that echoed Seligman’s previous statements) that
“Cattell’s usefulness to the University is ended.” 179 And as it later forwarded this
resolution to the trustees, the Committee took no notice of Cattell’s earlier antiwar
actions and agreed to start formal action to effect Cattell’s retirement the following
September.
Perhaps surprisingly, in none of Seligman’s memos and letters about Cattell’s
early 1917 behavior did he cite the AAUPs “Declaration of Principles on Academic
Freedom and Academic Tenure,” even though he had chaired the Committee
that wrote it. After all, in leading up to the set of “Practical Proposals” that
addressed grounds and procedures for the “orderly discipline and dismissal” of
professors, the Declaration emphasized that “it is . . . in no sense the contention
of this committee that academic freedom implies that individual teachers should
be exempt from all restraints as to the matter or manner of their utterances, either
within or without the university.” 180 Indeed, the Declaration explicitly “asserted
. . . not the absolute freedom of utterance of the individual scholar but [rather] the
absolute freedom of thought, of inquiry, of discussion and of teaching, of
the academic profession.” In addition, as Seligman’s and his colleagues’ experience
with Cattell over the preceding decade had convinced them—and as this
article has argued—it was this larger freedom that Cattell had long undermined at
Columbia. For this reason, probably, although without formal acknowledgment,
under Seligman’s lead Columbia’s Committee of Nine’s own actions more-or-less
followed the procedures outlined in the Declaration’s “Practical Proposals.”
The Denouement
Cattell probably did not realize that during the summer of 1917 he had lost all
faculty support at Columbia. However, even if he did it did not prevent him from
condemning the course of the war. Most notably, in August, he wrote a letter that
appeared in the New York Evening Post that addressed “The Age of Conscripts.”
181 In it, he claimed that if conscription had to be implemented, men in
their 30s, rather than in their 20s, should be drafted. In doing so, he argued
primarily that older men had already had their chance to reproduce and that
drafting younger men would further reduce the birthrate, about which he had long
expressed concern. Focusing on the individual, he emphasized that, for younger
men, “The best of life is just before them—love, children, performance, experience.”
Moreover, despite this argument’s overarching eugenic tone, one can see
in it Cattell’s own personal concern for his unmarried 25-year-old son McKeen,
by then serving on the western front.
Cattell then took his concern further and a week later enclosed clippings
of this letter in letters addressed to members of Congress, 182 urging their
support for a bill to prevent draftees from being sent to Europe without their
consent. Others—including newspaperman E. W. Scripps and U.S. Senator
Robert LaFollette—shared Cattell’s support for this policy. 183 But Congress
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never seriously considered the bill—which had been drafted to support conscientious
objectors—as most easily read it as a pacifist, antiwar statement. Cattell
wrote this letter on stationery with a Columbia return address. The university
apparently had no official stationery at the time, and he could claim it was his own
letterhead. However, its recipients readily assumed that Cattell had used official
Columbia stationery and, within days, several Congressmen wrote to Butler, to
ask why the university harbored traitors and to urge Cattell’s dismissal. 184
Meanwhile, after much preparation, 185 the Committee of Nine (with Dewey’s
concurrence) took the formal action that it had planned the previous June and
voted to “recommend the retirement from active service of Professor J. McKeen
Cattell.” 186 But Butler and the trustees had grown tired of faculty dithering, and
they abandoned any qualms they might have had about Cattell’s arbitrary dismissal.
They saw in Cattell’s letter the formal justification (in many ways, just the
excuse) they had long sought to get rid of him and they began (with no reference
to the Committee of Nine’s recommendation) to secure their case by seeking
formal legal opinion and confirming that Cattell had actually written the letter. 187
In all, they sought to counter the embarrassment (before the public, and the
university’s alumni, and especially before members of Congress) that Cattell had
caused the university, and have Columbia appear as patriotic as possible, and
(most likely) to set a example for the rest of the faculty, so as to head off any
further antiwar activity.
To reinforce their message to Congress and the public and the faculty and the
alumni, they immediately took advantage of the precedent they were setting with
Cattell’s dismissal and linked his case with that of H. W. L. Dana, the junior
English professor who had supported Owen Cattell. The previous March, as he
and Seligman discussed how to respond to Cattell’s escalating provocations,
Woodbridge had feared abandoning all defense of Cattell since, if the trustees
took “summary action” against him, “our position [in support of academic
freedom] will be weakened.” 188 And a few months later that’s just what happened.
As Butler and the trustees prepared their case through September 1917,
rumors of their plans swirled through the university and even as many Columbia
professors denounced Cattell, 189 several of his friends wrote to Butler to try to
head off his dismissal. 190 More faculty concern, however, focused on the fact that
the trustees planned “summary action” without reference to the faculty Committee
of Nine. Most notably, Dewey quit the Committee on September 25, after Butler
asked for Dana’s resignation, which was not forthcoming. 191 Dewey argued that
since the action occurred “without securing an inquiry” by a faculty body “there
seems no reason for the [committee’s] continued existence.” He had tried to calm
Cattell the previous spring and, when his efforts failed, he supported (or at least
did not oppose) the Committee of Nine’s vote against Cattell. However, he could
not tolerate the trustees acting on their own to violate his colleagues’ academic
freedom. In any event, he did not publicly acknowledge that, in many ways,
Cattell’s actions over the previous decade had forced the trustees’ hand.
About a month later, however, at a meeting of the University Council,
Woodbridge presented (what Butler called) a “very masterly and sagacious
analysis . . . of the underlying causes of some recent happenings” at Columbia that
well recognized that for years Cattell had poisoned the atmosphere at the university.
192 To be sure, Woodbridge also chided his colleagues for not taking quicker

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1902–1923
or further action against Cattell. However, his auditors clearly knew that he
believed that any violations of academic freedom experienced by Columbia
professors derived ultimately from Cattell’s activities.
On October 1, 1917, the trustees’ “Special Committee . . . to Inquire into the
State of Teaching in the University” issued a report that cited Butler’s earlier
warning: “What had been tolerated before becomes intolerable now. What had
been wrong-headedness is now sedition. What had been folly is now treason.” 193
It then recommended the “immediate dismissal” of Cattell and Dana “for public
conduct prejudicial to the influence and good name of the University,” and later
that day Pine, the trustees’ Clerk, informed Cattell that they had dismissed him
from his professorship. 194
The Aftermath
Most New York newspapers cheered Cattell’s dismissal. 195 So too did
Columbia Alumni News, 196 and in this way the trustees achieved one of their
primary goals. On the other hand, many other individuals and groups responded
much less favorably. Indeed, the complete range of private and public reactions to
this incident over the next decade deserves a detailed review, especially as
different organizations (such as the AAAS and the AAUP) and different individuals
(including Cattell’s Columbia colleagues and dozens of American scientists)
all had their own complex reactions. Full analyses of these reactions—and
especially of Cattell’s own responses—belong in their own article.
That said, this article’s thesis requires a relatively brief sketch of Cattell’s
actions after his dismissal. After talks with friends and his manic participation in
Socialist Morris Hillquit’s almost successful campaign for the New York mayoralty,
197 in November 1917 he asked the AAUP to denounce his dismissal and to
support his reinstatement. 198 After some hesitation, the Association formed a
Committee on Academic Freedom in War Time that reviewed Columbia’s actions.
Its March 1918 report addressed solely the trustees’ formal justifications for
dismissing Cattell and concluded straightforwardly that “it is a grave abuse of the
power of dismissal to deny members of university faculties of their fundamental
constitutional rights as citizens.” It also went further, to emphasize that “it is in
some respects a graver abuse of power when administrative officers or governing
boards attempt by their official declarations publicly to attach the stigma of
treasonable or seditious conduct to an individual teacher because of acts of his
which are in fact neither treasonable nor seditious.” 199
Unlike earlier statements by those who defended him, this report gave Cattell
“much satisfaction.” He even reprinted it—along with copies of his correspondence
with Columbia’s trustees—in a fly leaf “What the Trustees of Columbia
University Have Done,” issued as a pamphlet “Confidential Statement” for AAUP
members. 200 On the other hand, he asked the AAUP “to report on the true cause
of [his] dismissal and on the objects of the trustees in alleging false charges.” To
be sure, he may still not have recognized that his conduct at Columbia—and not
his letter to Congress—actually led to his dismissal. However, he knew—and he
wanted others to know—how complex the situation had been.
Cattell did not press this point, but instead began focusing on Columbia’s
denial of the “retiring allowance” that he believed he was due from the Carnegie
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Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching. Once he had the AAUP’s report in
hand, he formally requested Columbia to pay this pension and asked the Association
to help him pursue the matter. 201 The AAUP Bulletin published Cattell’s
request and the trustees’ formal rejection soon afterward and—again after some
to-ing and fro-ing—the Association appointed a committee to consider the “refusal
of a retiring allowance.” In January 1919, it issued a wishy-washy report that
avoided calling on Columbia to pay Cattell’s pension and simply concluded that
“in refusing to grant the pension claimed by Dr. Cattell the Trustees of Columbia
University . . . increased the punishment inflicted upon him by his dismissal.” 202
The difference in tone between this timid statement and the conclusions of the
AAUPs earlier committee shocked Cattell, and he asked the Association both to
clarify the report’s conclusions and to look further into “the danger of [universities]
using the accrued value of the pension to control and intimidate the professor.”
Nothing came of this request, however, and Cattell—who had earlier
questioned the financial stability of the Carnegie Foundation and criticized its
pension and annuity policies 203 —took it upon himself to address what he saw
were the Foundation’s inequities. Following the precedent of University Control,
he first published two articles in School and Society denouncing the Foundation
and its practices and then asked professors throughout the country for comments.
Many who responded feared or even experienced the kind of “control and
intimidate[ion]” that Cattell had asked the AAUP to investigate, and he then
gathered his articles, and these responses, and earlier AAUP reports on the
Foundation’s activities into Carnegie Pensions, published in 1919. 204 This book
attracted positive attention from the “liberal” press that had previously praised
Cattell’s efforts—for example, The Nation wrote of “Pensions that are Not
Pensions” —and late 20th-century scholars suggest that Cattell’s earliest critiques
played a role in the 1918 emergence of the more financially secure Teachers
Insurance and Annuity Association. 205 In any event, the overall incident soured
Cattell’s relations with the AAUP.
These grew even worse when Seligman—honored by AAUP members for his
role in preparing the 1915 “Declaration”—became the Association’s president in
1921. Cattell had despised Seligman since May 1917, when he apparently reneged
on a “gentlemen’s agreement” not to circulate Cattell’s letter of apology. Early in
1918 Cattell published another fly leaf—“Confidential Statement for Members of
the Faculty Club” entitled “Memories of My Last Days at Columbia”—that
rehashed the events of the previous year and presented Seligman in the most
unfavorable light possible. 206 Cattell thus deplored this election and he peppered
the AAUP’s Secretary and others with a series of critical letters. 207 These led the
AAUP Council to seek legal advice and to review its practices, and to soon
conclude that “no further action on [Cattell’s] protest is necessary.” The Council
may not have gone as far as Woodbridge had been tempted to in March 1917: to
“laugh at Cattell and treat him as a fool.” However, as one Council member wrote,
“I do not think that Cattell should be taken too seriously.” 208
While Cattell sought redress through the AAUP, he also consulted several
lawyers—including Hillquit and Roscoe Pound, the Dean of Harvard Law
School 209 —as to other steps he might take, at first to regain his professorship and
then (by the middle of 1918) to have Columbia (with or without support from the
Carnegie Foundation) pay him his pension. After several false starts, and further

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1902–1923
correspondence with Columbia’s trustees, he finally retained Alfred Hayes, a
former Professor of Law at Cornell and a self-identified “Progressive.” 210 In
September 1919, Cattell and Hayes formally charged that the Columbia trustees’
statements at his dismissal were “false, defamatory, malicious, and libelous” and
sued them for $115,000. 211 They also brought two other suits: against Butler and
the trustees who comprised the “Special Committee . . . to Inquire into the State
of Teaching in the University,” and against Columbia’s Alumni Federation, which
published Columbia Alumni News. 212
Months of legal sparring between Hayes and Pine followed, 213 and Cattell
continued (at times against Hayes’s advice) to send letters to the Columbia
trustees and others—copies of which he circulated widely—defending himself
and his actions and again calling for his reinstatement. 214 As Pine read a September
1921 letter, he concluded (in a letter to Butler) that it embodied Cattell’s
“formal demand for . . . payment” of his pension. He also noted that “public
sentiment is very different now from what it was in October 1917” so that—if
Cattell’s suit went to trial and Columbia continued to refuse to pay his pension—
“this fact would count very strongly against us,” so that “it is almost certain that
he would get a verdict in his favor.” Pine also stressed the potential cost of
Columbia’s continued defense and he thus recommended that the university agree
to pay Cattell the pension he would have received had he voluntarily retired in
1917. 215
Pine and Hayes met soon thereafter, and Hayes then urged Cattell to settle his
suits with Columbia on such terms. 216 Cattell demurred, however, resenting that
Pine presented the offer as an “act of grace” on the part of the trustees and that it did
not vacate Columbia’s “false, defamatory, malicious, and libelous” charges. 217 Hayes
then withdrew as Cattell’s attorney, and the two men disagreed briefly on the
amount of his fee. 218 By February 1922, however, as other lawyers refused to take
Cattell’s case 219 and Harlan F. Stone—Dean of Columbia’s Law School and later
Chief Justice of the U.S. Supreme Court—advised him to accept Columbia’s
offer, Cattell finally agreed. Stone even helped negotiate the final wording of the
settlement, 220 and on 2 February Cattell formally withdrew his suits. In return,
Columbia agreed to pay an annual pension of $2,570, a surviving-widow annual
allowance of half that amount, and a lump-sum payment, with accrued interest, of
his pension for the years 1917 through 1921. 221 A few days later Cattell received
$12,279.04 from Columbia—which he soon used soon establish The Psychological
Corporation 222 —and Columbia estimated the value of the cash payment and
the cost of the joint annuity at $42,027.12. 223
This settlement did not end matters, as Cattell continued to criticize Butler
and, in response, the university announced that it simply paid Cattell the pension
it had offered him in 1913. 224 Cattell also reprinted his letters to the Columbia
Trustees in yet another fly leaf and, swallowing his resentment, he also asked the
AAUP to publish these letters in its Bulletin. Before its Secretary agreed, however,
the Association’s Council urged him to seek “supplementary material” from
Columbia, and Pine provided copies of the Butler’s and trustees’ letters to Cattell
and its reports from as early as 1913, and these appeared with the contents of
Cattell’s fly leaf as “Columbia University versus Professor Cattell” in the AAUP
Bulletin the following November. 225 The publication of this “supplementary
material” renewed Cattell’s resentment of the Association and he drafted a final
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110 SOKAL
fly leaf, “The American Association of University Professors versus Mr. Cattell”
that, among other things, attacked the AAUP for not “tak[ing] special interest in
me” and for not “offer[ing] to pay the cost of my law suits and to have assisted
me in every possible way.” 226 He never published it, however, and he soon
focused his energies on his brand-new Psychological Corporation.
Conclusions
Anyone looking for a hero in this episode in the history of American academia
would be hard pressed to find one, as even those who praise Seligman for his role
in creating the AAUPs Declaration must contend with his apparent “duplicit[y]”
and “perfidy” in his relations with Cattell. Cattell’s own actions certainly do not
inspire admiration, since (as this article has shown) they actually undermined his
colleagues’ academic freedom. And this account certainly reinforces the unflattering
portrait of Butler that led others to think of him as the dot on the letter I.
Perhaps the most straightforward conclusion available is that personal “eccentricities”—to
use the word that John Dewey used in defending Cattell before the other
members of the Committee of Nine—and other aspects of individual personalities
are among the most significant contingencies that help shape the flow of events
that attract historical attention. This conclusion is certainly one that most biographers
would readily accept.
Indeed, of all those appearing in this narrative, John Dewey, perhaps, comes
out the looking the best. To be sure, his support of American entry into World
War I has been denounced by critics of the “Warfare State.” 227 But Dewey’s
actions throughout this episode reflect both an admirably consistent personal
loyalty to an old friend and strong support for academic freedom as it was
understood in the late 1910s. That is, in May 1917, Dewey came to the defense
of Cattell and asked his other colleagues if “scholars should be retired because of
eccentricities.” His point, of course, was that to dismiss Cattell simply on account
of his idiosyncrasies would be personally unfair to him and, more generally,
would diminish academic freedom at Columbia. However, despite this stand, only
one month later he concluded that he had to join the rest of the Committee of Nine
to agree that “Cattell’s usefulness to the University is ended.” In doing so, he did
not support the trustees’ plans for summary dismissal; indeed, by quitting the
committee when Butler asked for Dana’s resignation he emphasized just how
seriously he disparaged them. Instead, his actions demonstrate his belief that
Cattell’s behavior represented much more than simple eccentricity or idiosyncrasy.
In his view, then, this behavior sharply undermined academic freedom at
Columbia, and Dewey simply could not tolerate such sabotage. Indeed, that
Dewey’s actions support this article’s historical thesis is, perhaps, the strongest
evidence of its value.
In addition, it is worth emphasizing that this article argues its thesis through
the relentless accumulation and presentation of details; that is, through the “thick
description” of “the fine texture of the past” noted earlier. Such an approach is
especially appropriate in writing about Cattell. After all, it was the continual
accretion of Cattell’s nastiness and personal attacks that diminished the cause of
academic freedom at Columbia and finally drove the trustees to act as they did.

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1902–1923
Moreover, if this detailed review of his actions serves to illustrate this conclusion,
this article will have served its purpose.
Endnotes
1. See Richard Hofstadter and Walter P. Metzger, The Development of Academic
Freedom in the United States (New York: Columbia University Press, 1955); Eric F.
Goldman, Rendezvous with Destiny: A History of Modern American Reform, Rev. ed.
(New York: Knopf, 1956), pp. 197–198; Bentley Glass, untitled book review, Science 123
(27 April 1956): 726–727; William Summerscales, Affirmation and Dissent: Columbia’s
Response to the Crisis of World War I (New York: Teachers College Press, 1970); David
R. Goddard and Linda C. Koons, “Intellectual Freedom and the University,” Science 173
(13 August 1971): 607–610; Berenice M. Fisher, “Dirty Work and the Lessons of War,”
History of Education Quarterly 16 (1976): 343–354; Stephen E. Ambrose, “What had
Been Folly Was Now Treason,” Chronicle of Higher Education, 15 March 1976, p. 13.
More balanced analyses appear in Charles F. Howlett, “Academic Freedom Versus
Loyalty at Columbia University During World War I,” War and Society, 2 (1984): 43–53,
and especially Carol Singer Gruber, “Academic Freedom at Columbia University, 1917–
1918: The Case of James McKeen Cattell,” AAUP Bulletin 58 (1972): 297–305; incorporated
into Gruber, Mars and Minerva: World War I and the Uses of the Higher Learning
in America (Baton Rouge: Louisiana State University Press, 1976).
2. See Abraham Flexner, Universities: American, English, German (New York:
Oxford University Press, 1930), pp. 317–327; Arthur O. Lovejoy, “Academic Freedom,”
in Encyclopedia of the Social Sciences, edited by Edwin R. A. Seligman (hereafter
ERAS), 15 vols. (New York: Macmillan, 1935), vol. 1, pp. 384–388.
3. Edmund L. Pincoffs (Ed.), The Concept of Academic Freedom (Austin: University
of Texas Press, 1975), especially William Van Alstyne, “The Specific Theory of
Academic Freedom and the General Issue of Civil Liberty” (pp. 59–85); Walter P.
Metzger, “Profession and Constitution: Two Definitions of Academic Freedom in America,”
Texas Law Review 66 (1988): 1265–1322; Sheila Slaughter, “Academic Freedom
and the State: Reflections on the Uses of Knowledge,” Journal of Higher Education 59
(1988): 241–262; David M. Rabban, “A Functional Analysis of ‘Individual’ and ‘Institutional’
Academic Freedom under the First Amendment,” Law and Contemporary
Problems 53 (1990): 227–301; Louis Menand (Ed.), The Future of Academic Freedom
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1996); Rabban, “Can Academic Freedom Survive
Postmodernism?,” California Law Review 86 (1998): 1377–1389; Peggie J. Hollingsworth
(Ed.), Unfettered Expression: Freedom in American Intellectual; Life (Ann Arbor: University
of Michigan Press, 2000); Menand, The Metaphysical Club: A Story of Ideas in
America (New York: Farrar, Strauss and Giroux, 2001), pp. 411–417.
4. “Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure,” AAUP
Bulletin 1 (1915): 17–39; on p. 18.
5. Ibid., on pp. 38–39.
6. Slaughter, “The Danger Zone: Academic Freedom and Civil Liberties,” Annals of
the American Academy of Political and Social Science 448 (1980): 46–61; on p. 46.
7. On Butler most generally, see Michael Rosenthal, Nicholas Miraculous: The
Amazing Career of the Redoubtable Dr. Nicholas Murray Butler (New York: Farrar,
Straus & Giroux, 2006). Elizabeth Zoe Vicary offers a more sympathetic portrait in her
American National Biography (1999; hereafter ANB) article, vol. 4, pp. 101–103.
8. For example, see John B. Pine (Clerk of the Columbia Board of Trustees) to
“Murray,” 14 March 1911, James McKeen Cattell (hereafter JMC) papers, Columbia
University Archives, New York (hereafter CUA).
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9. Paul A. Freund, “The Supreme Court and Civil Liberties,” Vanderbilt Law
Review 4 (1950–1951): 533ff.; on p. 539.
10. “Joke,” G. P. Krapp to JMC, 13 May 1916; “Set back,” William A. Dunning to
JMC, 15 May 1916; JMC papers, Library of Congress, Washington, DC (hereafter LoC).
11. Frederick J. E. Woodbridge (hereafter FJEW) to ERAS, 28 March 1917, ERAS
papers, CUA.
12. ERAS to JMC, 18 June 1917, JMC papers, CUA.
13. “Academic Freedom at Columbia,” editorial note, New-York Tribune, undated
clipping, JMC papers, LoC. Cf. “Academic Freedom Not Involved,” Philadelphia Public
Ledger, 3 October 1917, John B. Pine collection, Worcester, MA.
14. See Michael M. Sokal, “‘Micro-History’ and the History of Psychology: ‘Thick
Description’ and ‘The Fine Texture of the Past’,” in Thick Description and Fine Texture:
Studies in the History of Psychology, edited by David B. Baker (Akron, OH: University
of Akron Press, 2003), pp. 1–18, 181–183. Sokal, “The Gestalt Psychologists in Behaviorist
America,” American Historical Review 89 (1984): 1240–1263, illustrates the value
of this approach, and this article’s own conclusions suggest further aspects of its utility.
15. Overviews and analyses of Cattell’s life and career appear in: Sokal, “Life Span
Developmental Psychology and the History of Science,” in Beyond History of Science:
Essays in Honor of Robert E. Schofield, edited by Elizabeth Garber (Bethlehem, PA:
Lehigh University Press, 1990), pp. 67–80; Sokal, “James McKeen Cattell, Achievement
and Alienation,” in Portraits of Pioneers in Psychology, vol. 6, edited by Donald A.
Dewsbury, Ludy T. Benjamin, Jr., and Michael Wertheimer (Washington: American
Psychological Association, 2006), pp. 19–35.
16. JMC, “The Conceptions and Methods of Psychology,” Popular Science
Monthly (hereafter PSM) 66 (1904): 176–186; Sokal, “Scientific Biography, Cognitive
Quirks, and Laboratory Practice: James McKeen Cattell and the Course of Early American
Experimental Psychology, 1880–1904,” under review; Sokal, “James McKeen Cattell and
Mental Anthropometry: Nineteenth-Century Science and Reform and the Origins of
Psychological Testing,” in Psychological Testing and American Society, 1890–1930,
edited by Sokal (New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 1987), pp. 21–45; Sokal
“James McKeen Cattell and American Psychology in the 1920s,” in Explorations in the
History of Psychology in the United States, edited by Josef Brozek (Lewisburg, PA:
Bucknell University Press, 1984), pp. 273–323.
17. Sokal, “Baldwin, Cattell, and the Psychological Review: A Collaboration and Its
Discontents,” History of the Human Sciences 10 (1997): 57–89; Sokal, “Science and
James McKeen Cattell,” Science 209 (4 July 1980): 43–52; Sokal, “Stargazing: James
McKeen Cattell, American Men of Science, and the Reward Structure of the American
Scientific Community, 1906–1944,” in Psychology, Science, and Human Affairs: Essays
in Honor of William Bevan, edited by Frank Kessel (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1995),
pp. 64–86; Sokal, “Promoting Science in a New Century: The Middle Years of the
American Association for the Advancement of Science,” in Sally Gregory Kohlstedt,
Sokal, and Bruce V. Lewenstein, The Establishment of Science in America: 150 Years of
the American Association for the Advancement of Science (New Brunswick, NJ Rutgers
University Press, 1999), pp. 50–102.
18. JMC to Edward B. Titchener, 19 December 1903, Titchener papers, Cornell
University Archives, Ithaca, NY.
19. F. Scott Fitzgerald, “The Rich Boy,” Redbook, January and February 1926. See
also Sokal, “Life Span Developmental Psychology and the History of Science.”
20. See Sokal, “‘Micro-History’ and the History of Psychology.”
21. Herbert G. Lord to ERAS, 16 June 1917, ERAS papers, CUA.
22. ERAS to Franz Boas, 2 July 1917, Boas Papers, American Philosophical
Society Library, Philadelphia.

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1902–1923
23. JMC to his parents, 11 December 1884, JMC papers, LoC, as published in An
Education in Psychology: James McKeen Cattell’s Journal and Letters from Germany
and England, 1880–1886, edited by Sokal (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1981), pp.
145–146. See also, JMC, “In Memory of Wilhelm Wundt,” Psychological Review 28
(1921): 155–159.
24. See Sokal, “Promoting Science in a New Century.”
25. JMC to his son McKeen Cattell, 1 November 1912, 6 November 1912, JMC
papers, LoC.
26. JMC, “A Program of Radical Democracy,” PSM 80 (1912): 606–615.
27. JMC, “Francis Galton,” PSM 78 (1911): 309–312.
28. “The Kallikak Family,” PSM 82 (1913): 415–416.
29. JMC, “The School and the Family,” PSM 74 (1909): 84–95.
30. Sokal, “The Unpublished Autobiography of James McKeen Cattell,” American
Psychologist 26 (1971): 626–635.
31. JMC, “The Diminishing Family,” Independent 83 (1915): 422–424; JMC,
“Families of American Men of Science,” PSM 4 (1917): 242–262.
32. For example, JMC, “The Depopulation of France,” Science 10 (1 September
1899): 296–297; “The Question of the Birth Rate,” PSM 62 (1903): 567–569; “Race
Senescence,” PSM 63 (1903): 88–89; “The Size of Families of College Graduates,” PSM
64 (1904): 570–571.
33. Frank S. Mead, Handbook of Denominations in the United States, 2nd Rev. ed.
(New York: Abingdon Press, 1961), pp. 175–186.
34. JMC, “In Memory of Wilhelm Wundt.”
35. Sokal, “Promoting Science in a New Century.”
36. For example, “The Administration of Syracuse University,” Science 27 (29 May
1908): 859–867.
37. JMC, “University Control,” Science 23 (23 March 1906): 475–477.
38. For example, JMC, correspondence with Howard Ayres, 1900–1902; JMC,
correspondence with C. Judson Herrick, May 1908; W. E. B. Du Bois to JMC, 12 March
1910, JMC papers, LoC.
39. For example, JMC, “Concerning the American University,” PSM 60 (1902):
170–182; JMC, “The Presidency of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology,” Science
24 (26 October 1906): 537–538; Edwin D. Starbuck to JMC, 27 December 1909, JMC
papers, LoC; JMC, “The Case of Harvard College,” PSM 77 (1910): 604–614; “Cattell
Would Simplify Administrative Methods,” Daily Illini, 23 January 1912, p. 1; “Whitman
Summons Rich to Service; Cattell Assails Colleges,” New York Times, 8 March 1914, p.
9; JMC, “Democracy in University Education,” Science 39 (3 April 1914): 491–496.
40. “The Control of a University,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 7 January 1906, p. B4.
41. Hamilton Holt to JMC, 17 October 1905, 24 October 1905, JMC papers, LoC;
JMC, “The University and Business Methods,” Independent 59 (1905): 1514–1516; JMC,
“The Achievements and Shortcomings of the American College,” School Review 18
(1910): 369–394.
42. E. E. Slosson, Great American Universities (New York: Macmillan, 1910), p.
374.
43. For example, Munroe Smith, “Columbia University,” Independent 54 (1902):
907–914; H. N. Gardiner to W. T Harris, 1 May 1902, Harris papers, University of
Southern California Library, Los Angeles.
44. See Nicholas Murray Butler (hereafter NMB) to Seth Low, 14 March 1891, 13
January 1896, 17 January 1896, 21 January 1896, JMC papers, CUA; NMB to Low, 18
June 1890, NMB papers, CUA; JMC to Carl E. Seashore, 30 September 1938, JMC
papers, LoC; Columbia College, Catalogue, 1894, pp. 92–93; “Educational Affairs: News
113

114 SOKAL
of the Colleges and Universities,” New-York Tribune, 28 April 1900, p. 4; Columbia
University, Bulletin of Information, 1900–1901, pp. 68–73.
45. See Rosenthal, Nicholas Miraculous.
46. John Micklethwait and Adrian Wooldridge, The Company, as excerpted in The
Times (of London), 29 August 2003, p. 27. See also Thomas Mallon, “An Empty Robe,”
review of Rosenthal, Nicholas Miraculous, inNew York Times Book Review, 22 January
2006, p. 15.
47. As an anonymous reviewer clarified events, Taft’s initial vice-presidential
running mate died two weeks before the 1912 election and – even though Taft lost the
election to Woodrow Wilson – Republican party leaders appointed Butler to complete the
ticket so their “electors could have a full ticket to support.”
48. In private, Cattell apparently often referred to Butler as “an old mossback
Republican.” See James Gutman Oral History Interview, Columbia University Oral
History Research Office, New York.
49. William F. Buckley, Jr., Saving the Queen (paperback ed.; New York: Warner
Books, 1976), pp. 216.
50. NMB to FJEW, 24 October 1905, JMC to NMB, 20 May 1905, 9 November
1905, NMB to JMC, 23 May 1905, JMC papers, LoC; FJEW to NMB, 3 November 1905,
8 December 1905, 11 December 1905, FJEW papers, CUA.
51. NMB to JMC, 27 November 1906, 27 February 1907, JMC to NMB, 13
February 1907, 26 February 1907, JMC, “Memorandum for Members of the Faculty of
Columbia College,” 12 April 1907, JMC papers, CUA.
52. JMC to NMB, 6 January 1907, 13 January 1908, NMB to JMC, 7 January 1907,
JMC papers, CUA; Thorndike to NMB, 18 February 1907, Thorndike papers, CUA.
53. JMC to NMB, 31 October 1905, JMC papers, LoC; JMC to NMB, 15 May
1909, NMB to JMC, 17 May 1909, JMC papers, CUA.
54. JMC to Low, 3 November 1900, Low to JMC, 23 November 1900, JMC papers,
LoC; JMC to NMB, 8 January 1909, 4 January 1910, NMB to JMC, 5 January 1910, 10
January 1910; JMC, “Memorandum Concerning the Salaries of Assistant Professors, 26
January 1910, “Second Memorandum Concerning the Salaries of Assistant Professors,”
24 February 1910, JMC papers, CUA.
55. JMC to NMB, 10 February 1909, NMB to JMC, 27 February 1909, JMC papers,
CUA.
56. JMC to NMB, 4 November 1905, 7 April 1906, 2 March 1907, NMB to JMC,
10 April 1906, 27 February 1907, JMC papers, CUA.
57. See Frederick P. Keppel, Columbia (New York: Oxford University Press,
1914), pp. 152–154.
58. For example, A. P. Wills to JMC, 31 January 1909, John Dewey to JMC, 25
February 1909, Richard Gottlieb to JMC, 8 March 1909, Harry Thurston Peck to NMB,
undated [1909], Calvin Thomas to JMC, 27 January 1910, Samuel T. Dutton to JMC, 28
January 1910, Thorndike to JMC, 31 January 1910, JMC papers, LoC.
59. See Walter F. Miles Diary, 18 July 1951, Archives of the History of American
Psychology, University of Akron, Akron, OH.
60. JMC to ERAS, 8 March 1917, JMC papers, CUA. Cf. C. P. Snow, The Affair
(New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1960), p. 122.
61. JMC to NMB, 2 February 1907, NMB to JMC, 4 March 1907, JMC papers, CUA.
62. NMB to JMC, 15 April 1907, JMC papers, CUA
63. JMC to NMB, 8 January 1909, JMC papers, CUA.
64. NMB to Low, 29 March 1909, Cattell papers, CUA.
65. JMC, “Memorandum Concerning Our Scientific Departments,” 25 May 1910,
JMC papers, CUA.

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1902–1923
66. Olive Hougenboom, “Harry Thurston Peck,” ANB, vol. 17, pp. 226–227. See
also Rosenthal, Nicholas Miraculous, pp. 198–210, 475–476.
67. Edward B. Coe to NMB, 22 June 1910, Peck papers, CUA; JMC to Peck, 2 July
1910, JMC papers, CUA.
68. JMC to Peck, 8 July 1910, 12 July 1910, 20 August 1910, JMC papers, LoC.
69. “Columbia Trustees Suspend Prof. Peck,” New York Times, 3 July 1910, pp.
1–2; “President Butler Autocratic, He Says,” New York Times, 4 July 1910, pp. 2; “Prof.
Peck Attacks Fellow Teachers,” New York Times, 29 September 1910, p. 6; “Peck Tells
of Plan to Oust Butler,” unidentified and undated clipping, JMC papers, LoC.
70. JMC to Boas, 4 July 1910, Boas papers.
71. JMC, “A Further Statistical Study of American Men of Science,” Science 32 (4
November 1910): 633–648, 32 (11 November 1910): 672–688.
72. David S. Webster, Academic Quality Rankings of American Colleges and
Universities (Springfield, IL: Charles C Thomas, 1986), pp. 111–113, 178–179.
73. For example, Franklin H. Giddings to JMC, 23 November 1910, JMC papers,
LoC.
74. For example, “Intellect and Service,” Evening Post, 14 November 1910, clipping
in JMC papers, LoC; “Harvard Leads in Science,” New-York Tribune, 29 November
1910, p. 6.
75. “American Men of Science,” University of Chicago Magazine 3 (1910): 183–184;
“Opinion and Comment,” Harvard Alumni Bulletin 13 (1910): 109–110; “Yale in ‘American
Men of Science’,” 2 December 1910, unidentified clipping in JMC papers, LoC.
76. Robert F. Martin, “Joel Elias Spingarn,” ANB, vol. 20, pp. 476–478. See also
Rosenthal, Nicholas Miraculous, pp. 210–217, 475.
77. Spingarn to JMC, 22 January 1911, 14 March 1911, 3 April 1911, 21 October
1911, 2 November 1911, JMC papers, LoC.
78. “Insurgent Spirit in Columbia Faculty,” New York Times, 14 March 1911, pp. 1,
3; “Faculty’s Insurrection,” New York Times, 16 March 1911, p. 8.
79. Pine to “Murray,” 14 March 1911, JMC papers, CUA.
80. JMC to Boas, 3 January 1912, Boas papers.
81. JMC to multiple recipients, 1 December 1911, JMC papers, LoC; “University
Control,” Science 23 (23 March 1906): 475–477.
82. JMC, “University Control,” Science 35 (24 May 1912): 797–808; JMC, “University
Control. II,” Science 35 (31 May 1912): 842–860.
83. JMC, “University Control,” Science 35 (24 May 1912): 804–808.
84. JMC, “University Control. II,” on p. 845. See also JMC, “Academic Slavery,”
School and Society 6 (13 October 1917): 421–426; on p. 426.
85. “University Control. Letters from Harvard University,” Science 35 (7 June
1912): 893–903; “University Control. Letters from Yale University,” Science 35 (21 June
1912): 964–967; “University Control. Letters from the University of Pennsylvania,
Science 36 (5 July 1912): 19–23; “University Control. Letters from the Johns Hopkins
University,” Science 36 (5 July 1912): 23–28; “University Control. Letters from Cornell
University,” Science 36 (9 August 1912): 174–178; “University Control. Letters from the
University of Chicago,” Science 36 (9 August 1912): 178–186.
86. For example, Joseph Jastrow, “The Administrative Peril in Education,” pp.
315–348 [reprinted from PSM 81 (1912): 495–515]; George T. Ladd, “The Need for
Administrative Changes in the American University, pp. 349–369 [reprinted from PSM 80
(1912): 313–325].
87. JMC, University Control (New York: The Science Press, 1913).
88. For example, Dial 55 (1913): 414; “The Administration of Universities,”
Independent 75 (1913): 577; “Academic Autocracy,” Nation 96 (1913): 471–473; “Czar-
115

116 SOKAL
dom in Our Universities,” Boston Transcript, 2 April 1913, clipping in JMC papers, LoC.
See also “University Control,” Dial 52 (1912): 451–453.
89. See JMC to Arthur O. Lovejoy, 5 April 1913, 20 May 1913, 23 May 1913, 28
May 1913, 14 October 1913, 24 November 1913, JMC to Dewey, 11 June 1914, 28
October 1914, AAUP Archives, Washington, DC; Lovejoy to JMC, 3 February 1913, 17
May 1913, 11 October 1913, 18 March 1914, Dewey to JMC, 22 May 1914, 29 May 1914,
JMC papers, LoC; Walter P. Metzger, “Origins of the Association: An Anniversary
Address,” AAUP Bulletin 51 (1965): 229–237.
90. Thorstein Veblen, The Higher Learning in America: A Memorandum on the
Conduct of Universities by Business Men (New York: B. W. Huebsch, 1918). See p. 19:
“It may be in place to add here that the volume . . . on University Control, has been had
in mind throughout the following analysis and has served as ground and material for much
of the argument.”
91. Philip J. Pauly, Controlling Life: Jacques Loeb and the Engineering Ideal in
Biology (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), pp. 142–143.
92. Jacques Loeb to JMC, 14 March 1913, 28 April 1913, JMC papers, LoC.
93. Simon Flexner to JMC, 19 May 1913, JMC papers, LoC; Loeb to JMC, 7
October 1913, Loeb papers, LoC.
94. JMC to “Committee on Admissions, The Century Association,” 8 May 1913,
Adolf Meyer papers, Johns Hopkins Medical Archives, Baltimore.
95. Pauly, Controlling Life, pp. 143, 227.
96. “Rejection of Loeb Stirs Century Club,” New York Sun, 14 May 1913, clipping,
Loeb papers, LoC; JMC, undated “Extracts from Letters,” Simon Flexner papers, American
Philosophical Society Library, Philadelphia.
97. Century Association to JMC, 6 June 1913; JMC to Century Association, 14 July
1913, Loeb to JMC, 24 July 1913, JMC papers, LoC; “Dr. J. M. Cattell Quits the
Century,” New York Herald, 15 November 1913.
98. JMC to Flexner, 10 May 1913, 13 June 1913, Flexner to JMC, 19 May 1913,
Flexner papers.
99. JMC to Titchener, 19 December 1903, Titchener papers.
100. JMC to Loeb, 4 September 1913, JMC papers.
101. For example, see Sokal, “A Collaboration and Its Discontents.”
102. William B. Parsons to NMB, 7 May 1913, JMC papers, CUA.
103. “Extracts from Minutes of [Trustees’] Committee on Education, 1 May 1913;
NMB to JMC, 9 May 1913, JMC papers, CUA.
104. JMC to Henry S. Pritchett (CFAT President), 8 November 1910, Pritchett to
JMC, 21 November 1910, JMC papers, CUA.
105. For example, “Dr. Loeb’s Sponsor Gets Hint to Resign Chair at Columbia,”
New York Evening World, 19 May 1913.; “Loeb’s Champion Asked to Quit?,” Evening
Sun, 21 May 1913.
106. JMC to George L. Rives, 13 May 1913, JMC papers, CUA Archives.
107. “Columbia in Revolt Over Plan to Oust Dr. Loeb’s Sponsor,” Evening Journal,
19 May 1913; John Dewey to NMB, 12 May 1913, Edward L. Thorndike to NMB, 12
May 1913, Robert S. Woodworth to NMB, 13 May 1913, FJEW to NMB, 13 May 1913,
JMC papers, CUA.
108. The Psychological Researches of James McKeen Cattell: A Review by Some of His
Pupils (New York: The Science Press, 1914; Archives of Psychology, no. 30, April 1914).
109. Jane M. Dewey (Ed.), “Biography of John Dewey,” in The Philosophy of John
Dewey, edited by Paul A. Schlipp (Evanston: Northwestern University Press, 1939), vol.
1, pp. 3–45; Dewey to JMC, 12 April 1904, 16 April 1904, 21 April 1904, 25 April 1904,
26 April 1904, 28 April 1904, 2 May 1904, 27 May 1904, 4 June 1904, JMC to Dewey,
undated letters, 14 April 1904, 18 April 1904, 26 April 1904, JMC papers, LoC; JMC to

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1902–1923
NMB, 19 April 1904, 24 April 1904, 26 April 1904, NMB to, JMC, 19 April 1904, 25
April 1904, NMB to Dewey, 23 April 1904 (telegram), 25 April 1904, 2 May 1904,
Dewey papers, CUA; Columbia University Quarterly 6 (1903–1904): 343; ibid., 7
(1904–1905): 370–372.
110. See William F. Jones, “Frederick James Eugene Woodbridge,” ANB, vol. 23,
pp. 787–789; Sokal, “A Collaboration and Its Discontents.”
111. Michael Pupin to NMB, 19 May 1913, JMC papers, CUA.
112. For example, Thomas H. Morgan to Loeb, 25 May 1913, Loeb papers, LoC.
113. Edmund B. Wilson to NMB, 20 May 1913, JMC papers, CUA.
114. FJEW to NMB, 13 May 1913, FJEW to JMC, 15 May 1913, MNB to Rives,
16 May 1913, JMC papers, CUA; Dewey to JMC, 15 May 1913, JMC papers, LoC.
115. Rives to JMC, 21 May 1913, JMC papers, CUA; “Cattell Retained by Columbia
Board,” New York Times, 3 June 1913, p. 18; “Disgraceful Sequel to a Sad
Incident,” unidentified and undated clipping, JMC papers, CUA.
116. For example, JMC to FJEW, 16 May 1913, Cattell papers, CUA.
117. Frederick P. Keppel, Columbia (New York: Oxford University Press, 1914),
pp. 159–160.
118. Cattell to Loeb, 23 May 1913, Loeb papers.
119. Morgan to Loeb, 25 May 1913, Loeb papers.
120. For example, “The Mad War,” PSM 85 (1914): 308–309, “Science and the
War,” PSM 85 (1914): 516; “War and Public Opinion,” PSM 85 (1914): 615–616; “War
and Social Progress,” PSM 86 (1915): 411–413; “Substitutes for War,” Scientific Monthly
1 (1915): 101–102.
121. “War and Peace,” PSM 85 (1914): 296–307; Andrew Carnegie, “A League of
Peace,” PSM 68 (1906): 398–424; William James, “The Moral Equivalent of War,” PSM
77 (1910): 400–410.
122. “The Races of the Europeans Nations and Their Natural Increase,” PSM 85
(1914): 309–311.
123. L. O. Howard to JMC, 9 September 1914, JMC papers, LoC.
124. Sokal, “Life Span Developmental Psychology and the History of Science.”
125. Interview with Helen H. Cattell, September 1970.
126. Sokal, “The Unpublished Autobiography of James McKeen Cattell.”
127. “National Defense and Development,” Scientific Monthly 2 (1916): 353–405.
128. “Military Preparedness” and “Scientific Strength,” Scientific Monthly 2 (1916):
412–416.
129. “Militarism and Schools,” School and Society 1 (6 March 1915): 353–355;
“The National Education Association,” School and Society 4 (8 July 1916): 75–76;
“Pacifists Lose Teachers’ Fight,” New York Times, 8 July 1916, p. 6; “Quotations: The
National Education Association and Military Training in the Schools,” School and Society
4 (15 July 1916): 102–106; “Annual Meeting of . . . the National Education Association,”
School and Society 4 (15 July 1916): 110–114.
130. JMC, “For Peace,” Evening Post, 25 January 1917, p. 8.
131. Loeb to JMC, 26 January 1917, ERAS to JMC, 27 January 1917, JMC papers,
LoC.
132. Hofstadter and. Metzger, The Development of Academic Freedom, pp. 501–
502; Horace Coon, Columbia: Colossus on the Hudson (New York: E. P. Dutton, 1947),
pp. 129–131; Rosenthal, Nicholas Miraculous, p. 230; “Dr. Beard Attacks Columbia
Trustees,” New York Times, 28 December 1917, p. 8.
133. Lawrence S. Moss, “Edwin Robert Anderson Seligman,” ANB, vol. 19, pp.
620–621; Carl S. Shoup, “Edwin R. A. Seligman,” International Encyclopedia of the
Social Sciences (1968), vol. 14, pp. 163–164; Stephen Birmingham, Our Crowd: The
Great Jewish Families of New York (New York Harper & Row, 1967), pp. 148–149, 252.
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118 SOKAL
134. ERAS, “Memorandum of What Occurred on Monday, March 5th” 1917,
ERAS papers.
135. JMC, “In Defense of Academic Freedom,” unpublished draft statement, 13
May 1916, T. S. Fiske papers, CUA.
136. Morgan to JMC, 17 May 1916, Thorndike to JMC, 15 May 1916, G. P. Krapp
to JMC, 13 May 1916, William A. Dunning to JMC, 15 May 1916, ERAS to JMC, 15 May
1916 (2 letters), Dewey to JMC, 17 May 1916, FJEW to JMC, 18 May 1916, Woodworth
to JMC, 24 May 1916, JMC papers, LoC.
137. JMC, “Confidential Memorandum to Resident Members of the Faculty Club,”
10 January 1917, JMC papers, CUA.
138. “Asks for Home of President Butler,” New York Evening World, 3 March
1917; “Suggests Butler’s Home for Faculty Club at Columbia,” New-York Tribune,3May
1917; Pine collection.
139. ERAS, “Memorandum . . . in Reference to the Cattell Incident,” 3 March 1917,
ERAS papers. See also “Proposal to Oust Butler from Home Stirs Campus,” New-York
Tribune, 4 March 1917, Pine collection.
140. “Extract from Minutes of the Trustees,” 5 March 1917, JMC papers, CUA.
141. ERAS, “Memorandum of What Occurred on Monday, March 5th” 1917,
ERAS papers; Rosenthal, Nicholas Miraculous, pp. 231–232.
142. “Minutes of the Trustees,” 5 March 1917; “Report of the [Trustees’] Special
Committee . . . to Inquire into the State of Teaching in the University,” 1 October 1917.
143. Pine to W. Barclay Parsons, 7 March 1917, ERAS papers.
144. ERAS to A. A. Young, 12 March 1917, ERAS papers; Boas to ERAS, 9 March
1917, Boas papers; Herbert M. Richards to Daniel T. MacDougal, 28 April 1917,
MacDougal papers, University of Arizona Archives, Tucson, AZ.
145. ERAS to JMC, 23 March 1917, ERAS papers; “Report of the Committee of
Nine,” 9 October 1917. See Rosenthal, Nicholas Miraculous, pp. 232–233; Hofstadter
and. Metzger, The Development of Academic Freedom, pp. 498–499.
146. FJEW to ERAS, 14 March 1917, ERAS papers.
147. FJEW to ERAS, 22 March 1917, ERAS papers.
148. JMC to ERAS, 8 March 1917, JMC papers, CUA.
149. FJEW to ERAS, 28 March 1917, ERAS papers.
150. Thomas R. Powell to JMC, 28 March 1917, ERAS papers; Dewey to JMC, 3
April 1917, 9 April 1917, JMC papers, LoC.
151. “Report of the Committee of Nine,” printed pamphlet, 9 October 1917.
152. Thorndike and Woodworth to ERAS, 7 May 1917, E. B. Wilson et al. to
ERAS, 7 May 1917, Woodworth to ERAS, 18 May 1917, ERAS papers.
153. Minutes of . . . the Committee of Nine . . .,8May1917, ERAS papers.
154. Dewey to JMC, 9 May 1917, JMC papers, LoC.
155. JMC, “Memories of My Last Days at Columbia,” 1918, JMC papers, LoC.
156. Minutes of . . . the Committee of Nine,” 11 May 1917, ERAS papers; JMC to
Committee of Nine, 11 May 1917, ERAS papers; JMC to ERAS, 16 June 1917, Pine
collection; “Report of the Committee of Nine,” printed pamphlet, 9 October 1917.
157. Samuel Lambert to ERAS, 17 May 1917, ERAS papers.
158. ERAS to John Erskine, 5 June 1917, ERAS papers.
159. “Extract from Report of Special Committee of the Trustees,” 4 June 1917,
JMC papers, CUA.
160. NMB, Commencement Day Address, 6 June 1917, in Annual Report of the
President to the Trustees, Year ending 30 June 1918, CUA. See Gruber, “Academic
Freedom at Columbia University,” pp. 301–302.
161. JMC to McKeen Cattell, 7 April 1917, Walter B. Cannon to JMC, 5 May 1917,
JMC to Keppel, 6 October 1917, JMC papers, LoC; Cannon, Letters Home from France

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1902–1923
and England, 1917–18, unpublished volume (W. B. Cannon papers, Countway Library of
Medicine, Boston), 13 May 1917, 13 September 1917.
162. See “Owen Cattell, New York Times, 28 March 1940, p. 23; Oakley Johnson,
“In Memory of Owen Cattell,” Daily Worker, 22 April 1940; H. W. L. Dana to JMC, 13
June 1917, JMC papers, LoC.
163. “Draft Law Leads to Three Arrests Here,” Evening Post, 31 May 1917, “Hit
Draft Plots in Many States; Arrest 3 College Students Here,” New York Times, 1 June
1917, pp. 1–2. Quotation from “Anti-Draft Case Goes to Jury Today,” New York Times 21
June 1917, p. 9.
164. Melvyn Dubofsky, “Morris Hillquit,” ANB, vol. 10, pp. 823–824; JMC,
undated “Notes for Counsel,” JMC papers, LoC.
165. “Columbia Students Face Federal Jury,” New York Times, 19 June 1917, p. 2;
“Anti-Draft Case Goes to Jury Today,” New York Times, 21 June 1917, p. 9; “Student
Guilty of Fighting Draft,” New York Times, 22 June 1917, p. 1.
166. “Short Sentences for Two College Students,” Evening Post, 12 July 1917;
“Columbia Pacifists Pay Fines of $500,” New York Times, 13 July 1917, p. 3.
167. “Nation-Wide Arrests on Charges of Treason in Antidraft Activity,” Washington
Post, 1 June 1917, pp. 1–4; “Draft Plotters Jailed,” Chicago Daily Tribune, 1 June
1917, p. 1; “America Enrolls Today for the Fight,” New York Times, 5 June 1917, pp. 1–3;
“Brave Roles Hastily Abandoned,” New York Times, 23 June 1917, p. 8.
168. ERAS to JMC, 5 June 1917, 11 June 1917 (telegram and letter), ERAS papers;
Edwin B. Wilson to JMC, 8 June 1917, Wilson papers, Harvard University Archives,
Cambridge, MA; ERAS to JMC, 11 June 1917, Edwin G. Conklin to JMC, 25 June 1917,
David S. Jordan to JMC, 16 July 1917, Morgan to JMC, 17 July 1917, all JMC papers,
LoC.
169. Pine to NMB, 21 June 1917, JMC papers, CUA.
170. “Dr. Butler’s Decision,” New York Times, 2 June 1917, p. 2.
171. Harold A. Content to Benjamin B. Lawrence, 28 June 1917, JMC papers,
CUA.
172. JMC to ERAS, 13 June 1917, JMC to Dewey, 13 June 1917, JMC papers,
CUA. At least two historians agree that Seligman lied to (or at least misled) Cattell. For
“duplicitously,” see Gruber, “Academic Freedom at Columbia University,” p. 299; for
“perfidy,” see Rosenthal, Nicholas Miraculous, p. 233. As noted, however, Cattell himself
never shied away from circulating others’ letters.
173. ERAS to JMC, 14 June 1917, ERAS papers.
174. “Prof. Cattell Apologizes,” New York Times, 24 June 1917, p. 19.
175. JMC, Excerpts of letters from ERAS, May-June 1917; JMC to ERAS, 16 June
1917; ERAS to JMC, 18 June 1917, all Boas papers. See also Lord to ERAS, 30 June
1917, ERAS papers.
176. ERAS to Boas, 2 July 1917, Boas papers.
177. Boas to JMC, 23 June 1917, Boas papers, Boas to ERAS, 23 June 1917, 28
June 1917, 5 July 1911, ERAS papers.
178. See Gruber, “Academic Freedom at Columbia University,” pp. 299–300.
179. ERAS et al. “to the Sub-Committee of the Trustees,” 18 June 1917, JMC
papers, CUA.
180. “Declaration of Principles on Academic Freedom and Academic Tenure,”
AAUP Bulletin 1 (1915): 17–39; on p. 38.
181. JMC, “The Age of Conscripts,” Evening Post 18 August 1917, p. 4; reprinted
Boston Evening Transcript, 1 September 1917.
182. For example, JMC to Julius Kahn, 23 August 1917, JMC papers, CUA.
183. Dale E. Zacher, The Scripps Newspapers Go to War, 1914–1918 (Urbana:
119

120 SOKAL
University of Illinois Press, 2008), p. 142. See also Robert W. Dubay, “The Opposition to
Selective Service,” Southern Quarterly 7 (1969): 301–322.
184. For example, Julius Kahn to NMB, 27 August 1917, S. Wallace Dempsey to
NMB, 28 August 1917, JMC papers, CUA; E. R. Bathrick to NMB, 10 September 1917,
Pine collection.
185. ERAS to “Members of the Committee of Nine,” 5 September 1917, ERAS to
FJEW, 6 September 1917, FJEW to ERAS, 7 September 1917, ERAS to FJEW, 15
September 1917, ERAS to Dewey, 18 September 1917, JMC papers, CUA.
186. Minutes of the Committee of Nine, 24 September 1917, ERAS to George L.
Ingraham, 24 September 1917, ERAS papers.
187. Pine to NMB, 21 September 1917, Frank D. Fackenthal, to JMC, 24 September
1917, JMC to Fackenthal, 25 September 1917, Pine to Ingraham, 25 September 1917, 28
September 1917, NMB to the [Trustees’] Committee on Education, 28 September 1917,
JMC papers, CUA.
188. FJEW to ERAS, 28 March 1917, ERAS papers.
189. For example, James C. Egbert to ERAS, 4 September 1917, ERAS papers;
Arthur L. Walker et al. to NMB, 19 September 1917, JMC papers, CUA.
190. For example, Boas to NMB, 29 September 1917, Boas papers, CUA.
191. Dewey to ERAS, 25 September 1917, ERAS papers.
192. FJEW, “The Deliberations Regarding the Cases of Professor Cattell and Dana
. . .,” undated draft statement; NMB to FJEW, 17 October 1917, FJEW papers.
193. NMB, Commencement Day Address, 6 June 1917, in Annual Report of the
President to the Trustees, Year ending 30 June 1918, CUA.
194. “Report of the [Trustees’] Special Committee . . . to Inquire into the State of
Teaching in the University,” 1 October 1917. Pine to JMC, 1 October 1917.
195. “Columbia Ousts Two Professors, Foes of War Plans,” New York Times, 2
October 1917, pp. 1–2; “Professors Cattell and Dana are Removed from Faculty of
University,” Columbia Spectator, 2 October 1917, pp. 1–2; “Justice is Done,” editorial
note, Columbia Spectator, 2 October 1917, p. 2; “No “Academic Freedom” for Sedition,”
editorial note, New York Evening World, 3 October 1917; “The Expulsions at Columbia,”
editorial note, New York Times, 3 October 1917, p. 12; “Wash Day at Columbia
University,” editorial cartoon, New York Herald, 3 October 1917; “Stamping Out “Sedition”
in the Columbia Faculty,” Current Contents for November, vol. 63, November 1917,
pp. 294–296; “Academic Freedom at Columbia,” undated editorial note, New-York
Tribune; “Columbia Bars Two of Its Faculty,” undated and unidentified clipping, JMC
papers, LoC.
196. Columbia Alumni News 9 (28 September 1917); “Trustees Dismiss Pacifist
Professors,” ibid., 5 October 1917, pp. 31–34; “Columbia Alumni Back Up Trustees,”
New York Times, 28 October 1917, p. 17.
197. Dr. Cattell for Hillquit,” New York Times, 21 October 1917, p. 4.
198. JMC to A. A. Young, 11 November 1917, Harvard College Observatory
collection, Harvard University Archives; JMC to Lovejoy, 14 November 1917, JMC
papers, LoC.
199. “Report of the Committee on Academic Freedom in War Time,” AAUP
Bulletin, vol. 4, nos. 2–3 (February-March 1918), pp. 29–47; on pp. 40–41; “Denounce
Ousting of Prof. Cattell,” New York Evening World, 21 March 1918, p. 24. For a different
reading of this report see Ellen Schrecker, “Academic Freedom: The Historical View,” in
Regulating the Intellectuals: Perspectives of Academic Freedom in the 1980s,” edited by
Craig Kaplan and Schrecker (New York: Praeger, 1983), pp. 25–43.
200. JMC to John M. Coulter, 30 March 1918, Boas papers; JMC, “What the
Trustees of Columbia University Have Done,” 1 October 1918, JMC papers, LoC.

ACADEMIC FREEDOM AT COLUMBIA UNIVERSITY, 1902–1923
201. Ibid.; JMC to “the Trustees of Columbia University,” 26 March 1918, Pine to
JMC, 3 April 1918, Pine collection.
202. “General Announcements: Columbia University,” AAUP Bulletin, vol. 4, no.
4, April 1918, pp. 3–5; W. F. Wilcox et al. to NMB, 16 November 1918, JMC papers,
CUA; “Report on Refusal of a Retiring Allowance,” AAUP Bulletin, vol. 4, nos. 1–2,
January-February 1919, pp. 43–45.
203. JMC to H. W. Tyler, 31 December 1918, JMC papers, LoC; JMC, “The
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching,” Science 29 (2 April 1909):
532–539; JMC, “The Length of Service Pensions of the Carnegie Foundation,” Science 31
(11 March 1910): 384–386; JMC, “The Fifth Annual Report of the President of the
Carnegie Foundation,” Science 33 (3 March 1911): 334–336.
204. JMC, “Life Insurance and Annuities for Academic Teacher,” School and
Society 8 (9 November 1918): 541–549; JMC, “The ‘Policies’ of the Carnegie Company,”
School and Society (4 January 1919): 10–23, JMC, Carnegie Pensions (New York: The
Science Press, 1919).
205. “Pensions that Are Not Pensions,” The Nation, 2 August 1919; “A Good Intent
Gone Wrong,” The Review, 4 October 1919; untitled reviews, The Outlook, 13 August
1919, and The Dial, 20 September 1919. See also William Graebner, “The Origins of
Retirement in Higher Education: The Carnegie Pension System,” Academe, March 1979,
pp. 97–103, incorporated into Graebner, A History of Retirement: The Meaning and
Function of an American Institution, 1885–1978 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press,
1980; Ellen Condliffe Lagemann, Private Power for the Public Good: A History of the
Carnegie Foundation for the Advancement of Teaching (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan
University Press, 1983), pp. 89–93, 220–221.
206. JMC, “Memories of My Last Days at Columbia,”1918, JMC papers, LoC.
207. ERAS to H. W. Tyler, 28 February 1921, JMC to Tyler, 22 March 1921, 29
March 1921, JMC to Lovejoy, 29 March 1921, Tyler to JMC, 25 March 1921, AAUP
Archives; JMC to Lovejoy, 28 May 1921, JMC papers, LoC.
208. Tyler to Harlan F. Stone, 31 March 1921, Tyler to ERAS, 21 March 1921,
Stone to Tyler, 4 April 1921, Tyler, “Circular Note to Members of the Executive
Committee, 11 April 1921, AAUP Archives. Quotations from Harris Hancock to Tyler, 18
April 1921 and Tyler to JMC, 28 April 1921, AAUP Archives, and from FJEW to ERAS,
14 March 1917, ERAS papers.
209. Morris Hillquit to JMC, 7 December 1917, 24 May 1918, 26 June 1918, JMC
to Hillquit, 3 April 1918, 24 May 1918, JMC to Roscoe Pound, 1 January 1919, 7 January
1919, Pound to JMC, 3 January 1919, 10 January 1919, JMC papers, LoC.
210. See “Calls Judges Reactionary; Prof. Hayes Says Bench Needs Men Not
Mediaeval in Politics,” New York Times, 13 May 1918, p. 22; Alfred Hayes to JMC, 9
October 1919, JMC papers, LoC.
211. “Prof. Cattell Sues,” New York Times, 10 October 1919, p. 27; Supreme Court
New York County, “J. McKeen Cattell, Plaintiff, against The Trustees of Columbia
University in the City of New York, Defendant,” County Clerk’s Index no. 24071–1919,
14 October 1919, Pine collection.
212. “Cattell Files More Suits,” New York Times, 26 September 1919, p. 22;
Against Butler et al., Clerk’s Index no. 23650–1919, 8 October 1919; against “Alumni
Federation of Columbia University,” Clerk’s Index no. 24070–1919; Pine collection.
213. For example, see “Amended Complaint, no. 24071–1919,” 19 February 1920,
and “Second Amended Complaint, no. 24071–1919,” 12 May 1920, Pine collection.
214. Hayes to Pine, 7 October 1921, Pine collection; JMC “to my former Academic
Associates,” 26 January 1920, Boas papers; JMC to “the Trustees of Columbia University,”
21 September 1921, Pine collection.
215. Pine to NMB, 27 September 1917, Pine collection.
121

122 SOKAL
216. Pine’s handwritten notes of his meeting with Hayes, 30 September 1921,
Hayes to Pine, 7 October 1921, Pine collection; Hayes to JMC, 30 September 1921, JMC
papers, LoC.
217. JMC to W. M. Parsons, 31 October 1921, Pine collection.
218. Hayes initially refunded all that Cattell had paid him, but he finally agreed to
accept $1,000 from Cattell. See Hayes to JMC, 7 October 1921, 14 October 1921, 2
February 1922, 15 February 1922, JMC to Hayes, 12 October 1921, JMC papers, LoC.
219. Samuel Untermyer to JMC, 8 October 1921, 18 October 1921, 26 October
1921, JMC to Untermyer, 12 October 1921, 21 October 1921, JMC papers, LoC.
220. JMC to Harlan F. Stone, 11 November 1921, 2 January 1922, 5 January 1922,
8 February 1922, Stone to JMC, 10 December 1921, 12 December 1921, 13 December
1921, 7 February 1922, JMC papers, LoC; Stone to NMB, 10 October 1921, Stone to
Parsons, 17 November 1921, Pine collection.
221. Supreme Court, County of New York, “J. McKeen Cattell, Plaintiff, against
The Trustees of Columbia University in the City of New York, Defendant,” Order and
Stipulation, 10 February 1923; JMC to “the Trustees of Columbia University,” 25
February 1922, Pine collection.
222. Sokal, “The Origins of The Psychological Corporation,” Journal of the History
of the Behavioral Sciences 17 (1981): 54–67.
223. JMC to Parsons, 31 October 1921, JMC to “the Trustees of Columbia University,”
25 February 1922, Pine collection.
224. “Columbia Settles Dr. Cattell’s Suit,” New York Times, 8 February 1922, p. 16;
“Cattell Criticises President Butler: ‘Simply a Bargain and that Was All,’ He Says of
Settlement of Libel Suit,” New York Times, 9 February 1922, p. 8; “Cattell Drops Suits
Against Columbia” undated and unidentified clipping, JMC papers, LoC.
225. JMC, “Letters of the Trustees on Columbia University,” 15 March 1922,” JMC
papers; JMC to Tyler, 8 April 1922, 13 April 1922, Tyler to, JMC, 10 April 1922, Edward
Capps to Tyler, 21 April 1922, 23 April 1922, 27 April 1922, 9 May 1922, Lovejoy to
Capps, 24 April 1922, Henry Crew to Tyler, 27 April 1922, Tyler to Capps, 29 April 1922,
AAUP Archives; “Columbia University vs. Professor Cattell, AAUP Bulletin 8 (1922):
433–453.
226. JMC, “The American Association of University Professors vs. Mr. Cattell,”
unpublished draft statement, JMC papers, LoC. Cf. Cattell’s 1883 graduate student
complaint in his private journal about Johns Hopkins president Daniel Coit Gilman: He
“has not taken as much interest in me, as he might have done.” See Sokal, An Education
in Psychology, p.24.
227. Clarence Karier, “Making the World Safe for Democracy: An Historical
Critique of John Dewey’s Pragmatic Liberal Philosophy in the Warfare State,” Educational
Theory 27: 12–47. See also Alan Cywar, “John Dewey in World War I: Patriotism
and International Progressivism,” American Quarterly 21 (1969): 578–594, 1977.
Received December 17, 2008
Revision received March 31, 2009
Accepted April 13, 2009 y