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

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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