Cornell & The Cold War

Accuracy in Academia ^ | October 5, 2010 | James F. Davis

[Academiadotorg]

The irony evident in the two part article in Cornell Alumni Magazine (July-September 2010), on “Cornell in the Cold War” by Professors Glen Altshuler and Isaac Kramnick, made me laugh. The subtle-as-a-sledgehammer attempt to appear scholarly while ridiculing conservative anti-Communists was also disturbing. For example, they describe Dean Malott (Cornell’s last conservative president): “Publically, Malott, the self-proclaimed conservative, defended dissent and free thought” as if that is something a conservative would never do when he defended the admitted Communist professor, Phillip Morrison.

Malott called upon “thinking citizens to stand behind the principles of freedom of thought and expression.” I wonder what Malott would think of Cornell’s College of Arts and Sciences today?

At the June 2007 Reunion, walking to a lecture with Professor Ted Lowi, I asked him, “Is the faculty’s token conservative professor still here?” Without hesitating he said “Yes and no. Jeremy (Rabkin) is moving to George Mason University.”

The proof is undeniable. The left has proven its hostility to a diversity of ideas in the College of Arts & Sciences. No conservatives are allowed.

[Da Coyote]

“...the College of Arts & Sciences...”

I protest the use of the word “science” adjacent to the word “arts”. It is obvious that there is a vast, unmeasurably large distance between those in the sciences and those in the arts.

Of course, any universal statement such as this is wrong...BUT...it’s becoming more correct than incorrect each day.

[wideminded]

I protest the use of the word “science” adjacent to the word “arts”. It is obvious that there is a vast, unmeasurably large distance between those in the sciences and those in the arts.

At Cornell it's mostly only walking distance. The term is used to give a name to the part of Cornell that is not a state agricultural college.

[Lonesome in Massachussets]

The term “arts and sciences” came about when the word “arts” conveyed the sense of “technique”, and might be better understood today as technology. The Latin root “art-” clearly would be better understood today as technique. Classical arts all involved considerable technique. The seven liberal arts were:

the Trivium

grammar
rhetoric
logic

the Quadrivium

arithmetic
astronomy
music
geometry

(A person studying classical astronomy, for instance, understood the precession of equinoxes, could calculate the phases of the moon and position of the planets for any date in any year or the date of the vernal equinox in a given year, for instance.) A person was not considered classically educated who had not mastered all seven of the liberal arts. Today a person can obtain a liberals arts degree from an “accredited” university and be a functional illiterate.