Education: The Final Arrow

George Stoddard, president of the University of Illinois, recently described his job to a reporter. "Archery," he said, "with me as the target." A top psychologist, onetime head of the University of the State of New York, and New York's Commissioner of Education, Pennsylvania-born George Stoddard made an impressive record in his seven years at Illinois—at least on the surface. Since 1946, the enrollment has doubled to nearly 23,000. Stoddard set up a new department of preventive medicine and public health, institutes of public affairs and labor relations. But he stuck his neck out often:

¶In 1945 the late Bishop James A. Griffin of the Roman Catholic diocese of Springfield denounced a passage from Stoddard's book. The Meaning of Intelligence: "Manmade concepts such as devils, witches, taboos, hellfire, original sin . . . and divine revelation . . . have distorted the intellectual processes of millions." Unitarian Stoddard protested that, taken as a whole, his book urged a "return to religion." Gradually, the storm blew over, but it was never forgotten.

¶In 1947, to head the moribund College of Commerce, Stoddard imported a Keynesian economist named Howard Bowen who was soon accused of firing a professor for being too "conservative." The Chicago Tribune picked up the cry, and Stoddard was forced to let Bowen go.

¶In 1952 he quarreled with Physiologist Andrew C. Ivy. vice president of the university, over the cancer drug Krebiozen (TIME, April 9, 1951 et seq.). Though Stoddard had scientific backing for his denunciation of the drug, many trustees felt that it was not up to him to belabor popular Dr. Ivy in public.

¶Last winter he got into a fight with Illinois' Governor William Stratton, who refused as unreasonable Stoddard's request for more than half a million dollars to set up a university TV station.

A hot-tempered, sometimes highhanded man, President Stoddard was anything but a diplomat with legislators. Complained one trustee: "How would you like to go to Springfield to get some money from the legislature and be asked by everybody in the corridors: 'When are you going to fire Stoddard?' '

Last week the trustees (including ex-Football Hero "Red" Grange) gave their answer. By a vote of 6 to 3, they expressed "no confidence" in President Stoddard, who promptly resigned.