Universities: Rocky Road

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But the best we can do now is to avoid having any more. I knew this was a difficult place, but I thought I could work here without getting too frustrated. I found I couldn't."

Comparable frustrations led the president of the college at Havre to quit last December, and his successor feels shaky. And Montana State College's President R. R. Renne seems to be in even deeper trouble. In January, the regents gave him a year's leave of absence to serve as U.S. Assistant Secretary of Agriculture. In April, Democrat Renne got a "return or resign" ultimatum from Governor Tim Babcock, a conservative Republican. Renne refused, but the regents are expected to fire him when he returns next year.

March Blowup. The resulting instability of the university and colleges creates constant turmoil. In March came a typical blowup when Morton Borden, associate professor of history, made a militant speech in Minnesota before the Farmers Union Central Exchange. Borden charged Governor Babcock with hostility to consumer cooperatives, adding: "Montana will remain a backwater of Birchism while the rest of the country progresses." Ordered to investigate, Newburn told the regents that Borden failed to "exercise appropriate restraint," but had a right to speak. The Governor advised Borden to leave Montana because "he scoffs at free enterprise and belittles the state that pays him. I might remind him that it is not the right-wingers who are being placed behind bars for subversive activities."

Borden got a year's leave of absence, and Newburn is off to become a professor at Arizona State University. But Montana is used to losing good people. Billings alone recently had nine boys at Harvard, and eight of them were on the dean's list. Once away, such exiles rarely return. One professor calls this "the single most damaging economic and psychological aspect of Montana."