would very rarely develop to the point which they have this year reached if there was not at least a tacit sympathy with the rioters on the part of important members of the university staff and indifference on the part of others.
The inflated Nationalist teaching, the prostitution of science to the evolution of pseudo-biological theories for the support of political extremism, the actual participation by professors in the parties of violence, the cowardice shown in some cases by the actual executive authorities have inevitably encouraged students in their evil ways. This weakness has had notable exceptions, on the part of both university and Government authorities, and the very fact that, for example, in Hungary, the firmness of the Government has taken so long to take effect shows the seriousness of the problem.
For there is a problem to be solved, both a cultural and an economic problem. It is tragic that so many really talented students go through their studies with a feeling of complete helplessness as to their ability to find an opening in the profession they have chosen. The minority problem inevitably presents itself in its most acute form in the universities.
This is where the condemnation of the professors is most justifiable, for what effort has been made to find a solution of these problems which have driven their students to the dishonorable methods of iron pipes and weighted sticks, of noisy demonstrations and futile bloodshed? Is it not time that they both published a serious declaration condemning all this violence, not only as dishonoring the name of student, but as utterly powerless to attain any valid result; and gave themselves to a more serious study of the problems of graduate employment and more harmonious relations between majorities and minorities?
In spite of all the talk of the revolt of youth, youth still follows leaders older than itself. Some of those who incite to violence are professors, and for the rest silence is not enough. Even if the whole poisoned atmosphere of Europe is in the last resort responsible for all the diseases it produces, yet when these diseases attack students as a class, it is legitimate to ask what remedy their teachers as a class are offering for them. It is those few professors who have had the courage to denounce and to protect who will be the first to admit that the answer of the universities to the crisis of today is a humiliating silence.
The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
