Education: The Deep Freeze

President Henry Schmitz of the University of Washington is learning that the academic world has its own techniques of cold, cold war. Six weeks ago he vetoed a series of science lectures at Washington by Physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer. Since then, both Schmitz and Washington have been getting the academic deep freeze.

Harvard Literary Historian Perry Miller and Sociologist Alex Inkeles both turned down invitations to lecture at Washington ; so did M.I.T. Physicist Victor Weisskopf. Last week the university revealed that seven top scientists from Washington University in St. Louis, Harvard, the University of Wisconsin and the Rockefeller Institute for Medical Research would not attend a scheduled symposium on the "molecular basis of enzyme action." Reason: Schmitz's veto had "placed the University of Washington outside the community of scholars." The big boycott hit the University of Washington where it hurt—right in its pride over its new, $12 million medical school. Said President Schmitz in his own defense: "I cannot emphasize too strongly that [the ban on Oppenheimer] was not a whimsical or a capricious decision." It had nothing to do with academic freedom, he insisted, but was based on a university policy that faculty members must meet certain personal as well as professional standards. This line of argument, however, was hardly the type to heal any wounds.

At midweek Hans Neurath, head of the biochemistry department, announced that the enzyme symposium would have to be indefinitely postponed. It "would have been." said he, "one of the most outstanding scientific gatherings of its kind ... Its loss is highly deplorable."