Freedon of the Universities

Abstract

WITH what now seems almost prophetic insight, the report of the University Grants Committee in 1936 referred to the special responsibility of the universities of Great Britain, in view of the suppression in the universities of several European and other countries of all independent thought and critical discussion of the principles of government or of the meaning of life, if the Greek tradition of candid and intrepid thinking about the fundamental issues of life is to be preserved for mankind. That responsibility has grown the heavier in the last three years. The area in which freedom of thought and learning is proscribed has grown larger year by year, and further waves of refugees have added to the burden of the Society for the Protection of Science and Learning, and converted what was possibly at first regarded as a temporary into an apparently permanent or perennial task.