Doctrine From Harvard

Again this year the report of President Lowell is notable not so much for the account it renders of a Harvard stewardship as it is for the distinguished contribution it makes to current educational discussion. The pronouncement that members of the Faculty are not entitled to representation on the University governing boards is perhaps out of tune with the newer note in educational administration, but it is sound doctrine just the same, and it is doctrine which needs to be often set fourth in these days when there is much loose talk about, "the natural antagonisms of professors and trustees."

In the well-ordered university no such antagonism exists. The relation between the governing board and the members of the faculty is not the relation of employer and employee, or superior and inferior, of master and servant, but "one of mutual cooperation for the promotion of the scholars' work." Both these elements in the university community have their task to perform, the one a task of expert character, and the other of a non-expert perhaps public, character. But the final authority, as President Lowell boldly says, must ever be the non-professional element, not only because it controls the pursestrings and is responsible for the financial management of the university, but because its detached position makes it the better interpreter of the public will.

A non-professional board is held to be the only body, or the most satisfactory body, to act as arbiter between the different groups of experts and scholars. And there is continual need for an arbiter. The struggle for the means of development between the various departments is keen and insistent. Someone must decide on the relative merits of the different claims. It is President Lowell's conviction that in a university with good traditions professors will be more ready to rely on the fairness and wisdom of a well-constituted board of trustees than on a board composed of "some of their own number, each affected almost unavoidably by a blas in favor of his particular subject." Boston Transcript.