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

96 SOKAL
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.