Emma Does
By: John E.
Peck, UW Greens Infoshop (IWW I.U. 620)
In the shadowed recess of Bascom Hall on the
UW-Madison campus is a modest plaque placed by the Class of 1910 honoring
academic freedom. Quoting from a now
famous 1894 decision of the UW Board of Regents, the bronze tablet reads: “Whatever may be the limitations which
trammel inquiry elsewhere, we believe that the great state
Donation of the plaque came after a little known yet
incredibly intense period of radical mobilization and conservative backlash on
campus not unlike that faced in the 1960s or even today. At the turn of the century, workers’ rights
were under attack and many campus activists organized in solidarity. In 1894 an economics professor, Richard T.
Ely, was branded a “college anarchist” for his efforts on behalf of striking
printshop employees. In a letter to the Nation
(
Yet, barely a decade and a half later another battle
for academic freedom was to be waged on campus, in large part swirling about
the visit of that “dancing anarchist,” Emma Goldman. Between Jan. 25 and 27, 1910 Goldman gave
several riveting and packed addresses, one in particular before the student
Socialist Club at the Madison YMCA. A
sociology professor, Edward Ross, heard of “infuriated patriots” ripping down
Goldman posters on campus and decided to speak out. As Ross recalls in his 1936 autobiography, Seventy
Years of It, - “This struck me as not quite sportsmanlike and, since the
topic of the day was ‘Tolerance,’ I characterized such manifestations as
anti-social and un-American, thereby calling attention to the Goldman
lecture…Promptly the newspapers shrieked that I was an anarchist; and then
certain financiers and capitalists on the Board of Regents (clever team-work!) solemnly shook their heads and gave it to the newspapers as
their pondered opinion that I was not fit to remain at
For announcing Goldman’s visit to his students and
leading her on a campus tour, Ross was censured the next week – “Whereas it has
come to the knowledge of the Board of Regents that Professor E. A. Ross of the
department of sociology in our University has invited to lecture in the
University and under its auspices, persons whose record and expressed views are
subversive of good morals, therefore be it resolved by this Board of Regents
that we strongly disapprove of such action.”
Clearly, the establishment felt threatened by the popular enthusiasm for
Goldman’s visit. Even the Madison Democrat
(
Inspired by Ely, Goldman, and Ross, the Class of
1910 broke from tradition and instead of placing a headstone in the woods
behind Main Hall, voted overwhelmingly to memorialize the “sifting and
winnowing” principle with a plaque on Bascom Hall. Rejected by the Board of Regents, ostensibly
because it would “establish a precedent which would lead to the mutilation of
the buildings,” the plaque was nonetheless accepted at graduation exercises in
June by an appreciative faculty. It lay
neglected in the dusty basement of the
Fearless sifting and
winnowing for truth may just be hollow rhetoric for many of the authority
figures now occupying the deck chairs on Bascom Hill and at the State Capitol. The rest of us, though, should be inspired
and encouraged by the activist legacy of UW-Madison and the radical heritage
of the rest of