Columbia University Medical Center Fires Six Pacifists; Univ. President Butler Declines Comment
Columbia University Medical Center reportedly fired six technicians and students who were advocates of pacifism.
University President Nicholas Murray Butler, chair of the Carnegie Endowment for Peace, who was on his way to Eurpe for the group’s annual conference on peace on this day was asked about the firings. “I have nothing to say about it,” he replied impatiently.
Butler had a notorious record during World War I. He fired two prominent scholars in 1917 because of their opposition to U.S. participation in the war. The famous historian Charles Beard resigned his faculty position at Columbia in protest.
In the present case, Osmond Fraenkel, a lawyer for the ACLU, announced that he would initiate legal action against the university on behalf of the students who were dismissed.
Read: Paul L. Murphy, World War I and the Origin of Civil Liberties in the United States (1979)
Learn more about World War I and its impact on civil liberties: Samuel Walker, Presidents and Civil Liberties From Wilson to Obama (2012)
And more about the origins and history of the ACLU: Samuel Walker, In Defense of American Liberties: A History of the ACLU (1990)