Formation of a national committee of 53 leading American scientists and educators, including three Nobel Prize winners, to campaign for preservation and extension of democracy and intellectual freedom, was announced today by Prof. Franz Boas.
Prof. Boas, Columbia University anthropologist, is chairman of the group which will be known as the American Committee for Democracy and Intellectual Freedom. The Nobel Prize winners on the committee are Prof. Robert. A. Millikan of the California Institute of Technology; Prof. Arthur H. Compton of the University of Chicago, and Prof. Harold C. Urey of Columbia University.
Five college presidents, nine college and university deans, the president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, Prof. Wesley C. Mitchell of Columbia, and the president-elect, Prof. Walter B. Cannon of the Harvard Medical School, are also among the members.
Prof. Boas said the committee hoped to set up local chapters in hundreds of schools and colleges throughout the country. The committee, he asserted, was an outgrowth of the scientists’ committee which organized the nationwide Lincoln’s Birthday Program this year.
“We are pledged,” Prof. Boas declared, “to protect and extend intellectual freedom, to strengthen our appreciation of the long and glorious heritage of American democracy, to combat propaganda for racial or religious discrimination or intolerance, to make our schools fortresses of democracy.”
Citing stands against anti-democratic forces recently taken by such organizations as the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Association of University Professors, the American Anthropological Association, Phi Beta Kappa and others, Prof. Boas continued: “We are convinced that these expressions of opinion have been useful, but they are not enough. They must be followed by action. Scientists and educators have a moral obligation to the American people and to the people of the world. In the classroom and lecture hall, in their articles and books, they influence the thinking of millions. Today as never before that influence must be exerted in a positive program for democracy and intellectual freedom.”
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