Battle of Madison (Cont'd)

"A university president who . . . lives and acts plainly will answer our purposes far better."

That statement, uttered early in the proceedings by Chairman Harold M. Wilkie. seemed to express the basic point of Governor Philip La Follette of Wisconsin, whose board of regents met last week in Madison to vote finally on the dismissal of Glenn Frank as president of the University of Wisconsin. All but four of the 15 regents had been appointed by Governor La Follette. When nine of them voted for an open hearing on Chairman Wilkie's charges against him, filed at last month's regents' meeting (TIME, Dec. 28), Dr. Frank knew he had only a slim chance of retaining the $15,000 job he had held for eleven years.

Harold Wilkie is a determined 46-year-old Madison lawyer. Hour after hour for two days he read and debated the 18,000-word bill of particulars that was to oust the best-known State university president in the land. According to Wilkie. Glenn Frank had miserably bungled or sidestepped vital educational problems in conducting the University, had permitted last spring's squabble between Athletic Director Walter Meanwell and Football Coach Clarence Spears to develop into a "public mess," had neglected his University responsibilities for too frequent lecturing outside Wisconsin, writing daily syndicated newspaper articles which had made him more than $100,000.

If Governor La Follette, through his regents, found President Frank remiss and inefficient, President Frank found Governor La Follette sordidly partisan, politically biased, dangerously dictatorial. ''Certain forces in Wisconsin" he rebutted, "want a Fascist kind of university administration.'' Patiently diagramming educational statistics which the fidgeting regents did not want to hear, he defended his decade's record at Wisconsin, cited higher enrollments, higher average graduate accomplishments in the professions. His newspaper writing, said Glenn Frank, occupied only three hours a week and forced him to broaden his reading: speaking outside the State, once a month on the average, brought invaluable contacts among alumni, industrial and educational leaders, which any university president required. "I planned this program as a definite part of my duty as president." declared he.

Aghast at the whole affair, President Anton J. Carlson of the American Association of University Professors, a University of Chicago physiologist who was on hand as A.A.U.P. s unofficial witness, exploded: "I have not hoped to live to see this kind of meeting. . . . The important thing is not Dr. Frank but the statement by Mr. Wilkie that governors always have insisted upon having a hand in the selection of presidents of State universities. ... I could imagine such a thing happening only in the early days of the Russian revolution by a committee of soldiers and peasants. It has happened here." As twilight of the hearing's second day descended over the campus. Glenn Frank had only a few more hours as Wisconsin's president. After recessing for a late dinner, the 15 regents returned at 9:25 p. m. to act on Regent Gates's resolution to remove Glenn Frank and appoint Dean George C. Sellery as temporary president.

Seizing a last chance to dramatize his side of the issue, President Frank jumped up, briefly related a meeting in 1925 with George Middleton. brother-in-law of Governor La Follette, on the day Frank's election to head the University of Wisconsin was announced. "Don't get your neck into that," he quoted Middleton as warning him. "It's against the wishes of the family."* Glenn Frank then sat down, the roll was called, and his academic neck was chopped Stoy.

When Amherst's trustees ousted Alexander Meikeljohn (TIME, June 25, 1923 et seq.),when Governor Huey P. Long forced Thomas W. Atkinson out of the University of Louisiana, the issues were plain between Reaction and Liberalism. In the La Follette-Frank ouster, the spectacle presented was that of one celebrated Progressive steamrollering another. Had Phil La Follette been a Tory Governor, the outcry from U. S. Liberals would undoubtedly have been prodigious, for along with his smooth exterior and the careful polish which has removed all trace of his native Queen City, Mo.. Glenn Frank has. with facile tongue and pen, built up for himself a shining reputation as a clear-sighted, forward-looking, modern-minded Thinker.

Against such an adversary, a political steamroller seemed to be the only weapon plain Phil La Follette could find to use.

That his conscience bothered him for using it was apparent when 1,000 of the students came slipping and sliding and shouting down the hill to the Capitol, interrupted him in press conference, made him face them in the Assembly Chamber.

At his protestations of sincerity they booed and he winced. In silence they heard him say: ''I am ... convinced that any unbiased person . . . would be warranted in concluding that it was not desirable in the best interests of the university to retain Dr. Frank's services as president." Peculiar was the position of Acting President Sellery, an arch-conservative educator called affectionately by some, contemptuously by others, "The Old Tory." In 1917 he and most of the rest of Wisconsin's faculty signed a round robin denouncing old Father "Fighting Bob" La Follette for his pacifism. La Follette adherents never forgave him, hinted that Glenn Frank should fire him as soon as he became president in 1925.

To show his independence, Dr. Frank refused, but four years later, finding Dean Sellery unsympathetic, sought to have the regents oust him. The move, however, was never brought before the board. Making it plain that he did not expect or wish to hold his new job more than a semester, Acting President Sellery called the faculty together, found that the majority felt Glenn Frank had got about what he deserved.

* In Manhattan, Brother-in-law Middleton last week denied this.

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