THE CLERGY AND THE UNIVERSITY

The continuance of a Boston University dynasty of Methodist clergymen has been the point at issue in a controversy in the Boston Transcript this week over the recent appointment of a Pittsburgh minister as president of the institution.

A short letter Monday from a disgruntled graduate raised the question whether a clergyman without experience in education was the logical choice for the president of a great metropolitan university. Bishop Anderson's answering plea for a sympathetic trial of the president-elect was criticised Wednesday by a prominent Bostonian, Charles K. Bolton of the Athenaeum, as leaving the main issue untouched. He suggested that the Boston public, more than once appealed to for financial support may well object to an unbroken line of Methodist clergymen at the head of such an institution, and asked whether a man's usefulness as a Methodist pastor in Pittsburgh was "in itself a sufficient qualification to make him the head of a great university in a city with which he has not been identified."

Bishop Anderson's last letter closes with the statement that "it will not be profitable to continue the discussion further in the papers." But B. U.'s great need of support, of which he speaks, the number of protesters against the new appointment, and the pertinence of their arguments all indicate that the subject is not yet closed.