Alexander Meiklejohn

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The youngest of eight sons, Alexander Meiklejohn (1872 - 1964) was born in Rochdale, England, of Scottish parents. His family moved to Rhode Island when he was eight, and he later attended nearby Brown University where he earned his baccalaureate and master's degrees in philosophy. He followed his graduate adviser and close friend James Seth to Cornell University to pursue his doctorate. A few years later, Meiklejohn married his first wife, Nannine, and they began a family.

Upon receiving his doctorate, Meiklejohn returned to Brown as an assistant professor of logic and metaphysics. He attained the rank of professor after nine years, having earned the respect of his colleagues and the admiration of his students. In 1901 Meiklejohn was named dean at Brown (his title was later changed to dean of undergraduates). His most distinctive act as dean was to disqualify Brown's championship baseball team over questions of sportsmanship and honesty. Brown's trustees supported this action and the students accepted it, but the alumni were outraged.

Even as he was establishing himself at his alma mater, Amherst College sought Meiklejohn as a new president who could bring energy and innovation to a college facing declining admissions and sagging academic standards. Inaugurated as president of Amherst in October 1912, Meiklejohn quickly set to work to institute his educational ideals. Almost as quickly, his policies created enemies among the faculty, trustees, and alumni. He opposed the newly popular elective system, believing that students could better understand human culture and the natural world if they were not educated in narrowly specialized classes. He proposed a variety of options for a required curriculum, none of which the faculty accepted.

Turning his attention to other passions, Meiklejohn set up college extension classes in local mills and factories where students taught and interacted with laborers. He hired many new faculty members, terminated many older professors, and chose to ignore those whose tenure was beyond challenge. He irritated additional alumni by refusing to emphasize athletics and by maintaining the tradition of part-time basketball and football coaches. Even within the local community, Meiklejohn was unpopular: Neither he nor his wife were active in the predominant Congregationalist church, and she wrote children's books, traveled to Europe alone, and smoked cigarettes. Meiklejohn himself was known as a socialist, although he never affiliated himself with the Socialist Party. His outspoken opposition to the World War I eroded further the base of supporters of his presidency at Amherst. Nevertheless, he persevered.

By 1923 Meiklejohn was accused by his enemies of financial mismanagement, and the board of trustees asked for his resignation. In protest, twelve graduating seniors refused their diplomas, and eight faculty members resigned their positions. Though he resigned from Amherst, Meiklejohn capitalized on the media controversy surrounding his departure. He toured the country and delivered speeches to promote his first two books: The Liberal College, published in 1920, and Freedom and the College released in 1923.

President Glenn Frank offered Meiklejohn a professorship at the University of Wisconsin in Madison, but struggling with the death of his wife Nannine, he refused the appointment. The next year, however, Frank asked Meiklejohn to create an experimental college within the university, for which he would be given free reign to institute many of the reforms that he had advocated at Amherst and in his books and speeches. Meiklejohn took the post in March, 1926.

The Experimental College at the University of Wisconsin opened in 1927 with an incoming class of 119 men, who signed up for the two-year prescribed program of study. During the first year, students studied Athens in the fifth century B.C.E.; in their second year they traced the history of America through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. Between academic years, students were expected to write an anthropological report on the region where they grew up. Faculty members (called advisers to defuse traditional expectations) met with students throughout each week in full-class meetings, but also held regular sessions with subgroups of twelve and engaged in many personal discussions with students.

External opposition to the program mounted quickly. University faculty criticized its independent governance and eclectic curriculum, and newspaper editorials and press reports lambasted its egalitarian pedagogy and Meiklejohn's arrogant style. Responding to these threats and to the economic problems of the Great Depression, the university administration proposed significant changes in the Experimental College in the 1930 - 1931 academic year. Standardized testing was to be introduced, and curriculum modifications made. Meiklejohn and the faculty refused to comply, and the university senate and administration closed the program in the spring of 1932. The short-lived experiment, however, gave birth to a long-lived legacy: Over the next half-century, the Experimental College inspired scores of innovative undergraduate programs across the United States.

Following the closure of his college, Meiklejohn and his second wife, Helen, moved to Berkeley, California, where they helped found the San Francisco School for Social Studies. The school was open and free to all applicants - from traditional students to housewives, laborers, and retired persons. Beginning with the first class of 300 students in 1934, readings and discussions centered on classical social thinkers and contemporary social problems. By 1942, when the school closed due to economic pressures from World War II, more than 1,700 students were enrolling each year. Meiklejohn pursued his interests in constitutional rights to free speech, protesting against the permanent installation of the House Un-American Affairs Committee and loyalty oaths. He published Free Speech and its Relation to Self Government in 1948, and received honors from the American Civil Liberties Union and the Socialist League for Industrial Democracy. He served as vice president of the league for almost forty years. Alexander Meiklejohn died at the age of ninety-two.

Alexander Meiklejohn's influence is still felt in higher education. Scott Buchanan and Stringfellow Barr rebuilt St. John's College based on Meiklejohn's Experimental College in Wisconsin and Robert M. Hutchins' reforms at the University of Chicago. In Meiklejohn's later years, he was a "sympathetic observer" and senior guide for Joseph Tussman and others who founded the Experimental College at the University of California, Berkeley. Tussman described himself in those years as a "direct spiritual descendent" of Alexander Meiklejohn.

Bibliography

Brown, Cynthia Stokes. 1981. Alexander Meiklejohn: Teacher of Freedom. Berkeley, CA: Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute.

Tussman, Joseph. 1969. Experiment at Berkeley. New York: Oxford University Press.

— L. JACKSON NEWELL, PADRAIC MACLEISH

It has been suggested that Meiklejohnian absolutism be merged into this article or section. (Discuss) Proposed since December 2011.

1928 Time cover featuring Meiklejohn

Alexander Meiklejohn (February 1, 1872—December 17, 1964) was a philosopher, university administrator, and free-speech advocate. He served as dean of Brown University and president of Amherst College.

Contents 1 Life and career 2 On free speech 3 Legacy and recognition 4 List of writings 5 See also 6 References 7 External links

Life and career

Meiklejohn was born in Rochdale, Lancashire, England of Scottish descent, being the youngest of eight sons. When he was eight, the family moved to the United States, settling in Rhode Island. Family members pooled their money to send him to school. He earned his bachelor's and master's degrees at Brown and completed his doctorate in philosophy at Cornell in 1897. At Brown he was a member of Theta Delta Chi.

In the same year, he began teaching at Brown. In 1901 he became dean of the school, a position he held for twelve years. The first-year advising program at Brown now bears his name. From 1913 to 1923 he was president of Amherst College. From there he went to the University of Wisconsin–Madison, where he taught and set up an experimental college. He then, in 1938, joined the School of Social Studies in San Francisco, where he was involved with adult education. His books span the period from 1920 to 1960.

On free speech

Meiklejohn is known as an advocate of First Amendment freedoms and was a member of the National Committee of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).^{[citation needed]} Meiklejohn is one of the most notable proponents of the link between freedom of speech and democracy. He argues that the concept of democracy is that of self-government by the people. For such a system to work an informed electorate is necessary. In order to be appropriately knowledgeable, there must be no constraints on the free flow of information and ideas. According to Meiklejohn, democracy will not be true to its essential ideal if those in power are able to manipulate the electorate by withholding information and stifling criticism. Meiklejohn acknowledges that the desire to manipulate opinion can stem from the motive of seeking to benefit society. However, he argues, choosing manipulation negates, in its means, the democratic ideal.^[1] Eric Barendt has called the defence of free speech on the grounds of democracy "probably the most attractive and certainly the most fashionable free speech theory in modern Western democracies".^[2]

Although Meiklejohn died in 1964 his ideas are still informing the ongoing discussion about how the United States "experiment" in democracy is best understood. This is happening in a very pointed way in early twenty-first centuary attempts to regulate the ways in which campaigns for political office are financed, and reactions to such attempts by the Supreme Court of the United States. Justice Stephen G. Breyer, in particular, has adopted Meiklejohn's interpretation of the First Amendment to the United States Constitution. In Jeremiah Nixon v. Shrink Misouri et al., 528 U.S. 377 (2000), at 401, Justice Breyer (joined by Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg) wrote a concurring opinion in support of such regulation. In response to protestations that such laws violate citizen's rights to free speech, Breyer held that there were free spech arguments on both sides of the issue. He said that properly framed regulations limiting monetary contributions could substantially expand the opportunity for freedom of expression rather than limit it. He pointed out that the integrity of the electoral process needs to be maintained since that is the means by which a free society translates political advocacy into concrete political action, and that regulating the financing of political campaigns is integral to that advocacy. In doing so Breyer cited Meiklejohn's interpretation of the First Amendment which gives emphasis to public need rather than individual prerogative. Arguably at least, the issues in cases like this go to the heart of any discussion about what United States democracy is or ought to be, because such discussions will involve not only the way money is related to speech and the nature of partisan political debate, but also the matter of government regulations and how much attention should be given to collective needs as compared with individual ones - all of which were central to Meiklekohn's concern about the very meaning of freedom. See Eugene H. Perry, A Socrates for all Seasons - Alexander Meiklejohn and Deliberative Democracy, (Bloomington,Indiana: iUniverse Press, 2011).

Legacy and recognition

In 1945 he was a U.S. delegate to the founding meeting of UNESCO in London. The American Association of University Professors (AAUP) established the Alexander Meiklejohn Freedom Award to honor his work. He received the Rosenberger Medal in 1959. Meiklejohn was selected by John F. Kennedy to receive the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which was presented by Lyndon B. Johnson shortly after Kennedy's death.

The Meiklejohn Advising Program is Brown University's advising program for incoming first-year students. Meiklejohn Advisors (known as Meiklejohns for short) are student advisors who are paired with each first-year, along with a faculty advisor, to provide academic advice and help the transition to college.

The University of Wisconsin–Madison's Meiklejohn House (home to the Integrated Liberal Studies program) continues to espouse the ideals of Meiklejohn's experimental college by engaging students in interdisciplinary liberal education.

List of writings

• The Liberal College
• Freedom and the College
• The Experimental College, 1932 (full text online)
• Free Speech and its Relation to Self-Government, 1948 (full text online)
• Political Freedom; the Constitutional Powers of the People

See also

• Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute (MCLI)

References

This article includes a list of references, but its sources remain unclear because it has insufficient inline citations. Please help to improve this article by introducing more precise citations. (December 2009)

• Alexander Meiklejohn: Teacher of Freedom, by Cynthia Stokes Brown. MCLI, 1981.

1. ^ Marlin, Randal (2002). Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion. Broadview Press. pp. 226–227. ISBN 1-55111-376-7 978-1551113760. http://books.google.com/books?id=Zp38Ot2g7LEC&pg=PA226&dq=%22free+speech%22+democracy#PPA229,M1. 
2. ^ Marlin, Randal (2002). Propaganda and the Ethics of Persuasion. Broadview Press. pp. 226. ISBN 1-55111-376-7 978-1551113760. http://books.google.com/books?id=Zp38Ot2g7LEC&pg=PA226&dq=%22free+speech%22+democracy#PPA229,M1. 

External links

• Alexander Meiklejohn, Philosopher, Dean, Advocate of Free Speech
• Alexander Meiklejohn and the Experimental College
• Alexander Meiklejohn Papers at Amherst College Archives
• Meiklejohn Advising - Brown University
• The Experimental College (1932), by Alexander Meiklejohn. From the University of Wisconsin–Madison Digital Collections Center.
• Free Speech and its Relation to Self-government, by Alexander Meiklejohn. From the University of Wisconsin–Madison Digital Collections Center.
• Remembering Alexander Meiklejohn A tribute by Joseph Tussman, a former student

Academic offices
Preceded by George Harris	President of Amherst College 1912–1924	Succeeded by George Daniel Olds

Persondata
Name	Meiklejohn, Alexander
Alternative names
Short description
Date of birth	1872
Place of birth
Date of death	1964
Place of death

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