The Chancellor and His Principals: Administrative Reponses to Socialist Professors at McGill, c. 1930-1941

This is the second post in a three-part series about socialism at McGill in the 1930s.

Raffaella Cerenzia

As the 1930s unfolded, the soaring unemployment and general miseries of the Great Depression breathed new life into the Canadian left. Socialism began to take root in federal politics, a process exemplified by the founding of the Co-operative Commonwealth Federation (CCF) in 1932. As an institution that catered to elites, McGill University was in many ways protected from the worst the Depression had to offer. Even so, the tensions playing out across Canada could be found on McGill’s campus. Balancing the books was a consuming struggle for the decade’s administrators, and they remained preoccupied with keeping socialist influences on campus in check. Throughout the 1930s, McGill’s handful of socialist students and professors were active and vocal. Early in the decade, socialist students printed a CCF-aligned publication. Socialist professors engaged repeatedly in public newspaper debates and lectures. Both groups’ activities drew significant public attention. For McGill’s governors and donors, who were largely drawn from the ranks of Montreal’s business elite, this was a source of great consternation and outcry.^[1] Protecting McGill against this perceived threat to its reputation became a major preoccupation for the university’s leadership during the Great Depression.

McGill’s principalship was no steadying force amid the turmoil. From 1930 to 1941, the position passed hands four times. For the two years when there was no principal at all, the chancellor, Sir Edward Beatty, took the reins instead. All of the head administrators wanted to protect McGill’s reputation and preserve academic freedom, but each defined those concepts in very different terms. The principals’ reactions to socialist professors thus flip-flopped throughout the decade, passing from unhappy acceptance to active support, and then to active resistance. As the principalship rapidly rotated, Chancellor Beatty remained a stable, influential, and decidedly anti-socialist presence.

Two main targets of the administrators’ ire were professors Eugene Forsey of the Department of Economics and Political Science and Frank Scott of the Faculty of Law. Both were outspoken critics of capitalism; both had ties to the CCF. They also had a tendency to speak out on the public stage. In 1931, Scott became embroiled in a newspaper debate with Montreal’s chief of police over the right of Communists to assemble peacefully. He repeatedly spoke at political conferences and wrote for union publications. Forsey equally antagonized McGill’s administrators. The “rosy-hued account of Soviet life” that he published in 1932 was particularly egregious. He also drew attention for having “allegedly [and publicly] described capitalists as ‘greedy’ and predicted the demise of capitalism.”^[2] Such comments upset the capitalist-dominated board of governors, and each principal had to face the question of what exactly to do with these wayward professors.

For Principal Sir Arthur Currie (1920-1933), the primary issue was that the professors’ views were being associated with those of the university. Currie cared deeply about academic freedom, but also about keeping McGill “above party” and politics. When Scott published his controversial 1931 Gazette article, he signed off as “Associate Professor…, McGill University.” In response, Currie simply told Scott to publicly distance his opinions from those of McGill. Whether dealing with socialist professors or with their like-minded students, Currie’s goal was the same: to stop them from using McGill’s name, thus severing any possible link in the public mind between the socialists’ opinions, and those of McGill. Currie’s approach was more moderate than some advised; the principal apparently received numerous requests “to bridle the tongues of these young men” (or, more bluntly, to “muzzle” the “idiots”). Currie stood firm; in 1933, he “prepared an internal memo affirming McGill’s right to academic freedom,” and was prepared to make a public statement.^[3]

Currie’s moderation certainly did not stem from a personal attachment to the professors. He found Forsey to be a “very dogmatic’’ teacher who had “never written anything of value, does not adopt… the proper professorial attitude in his lectures, and certainly brings a good deal of criticism upon the University for the things he says in his public addresses.” Even so, Currie maintained that “When we dismiss him we shall do so because he has been a failure as a teaching professor,” and not because of his political values. Unfortunately for Currie, this seemed impossible: he knew that even if he fired Forsey for poor performance, people would assume it was because of the latter’s politics. To protect McGill’s reputation for academic freedom, Currie unhappily renewed Forsey’s teaching contract in 1933.^[4]

But Currie was not principal forever. When illness temporarily indisposed Currie in 1928, Chancellor Beatty chose the acting principal, then quickly “let it be known that he would make himself constantly available.” The chancellor’s role shifted permanently from “properly supportive” to “dominating,” even after a still-weak Currie returned.^[5] Beatty was, by nature and effort, a dominating man. As president of the Canadian Pacific Railway (CPR), he was used to being the most important person in the room—and just as he dominated CPR board meetings, so he dominated meetings of McGill’s board of governors. (The governors met, in fact, in the CPR boardroom.) Beatty professed to support academic freedom, but his idea of freedom apparently stopped short of protecting socialism. He claimed to accept socialist professors, so long as they weren’t propagandizing to students, but this was an impossible criterion: Beatty was also sure that professors “quite unconsciously” championed their politics in the classroom.^[6] As a leading capitalist, it is little surprise that Beatty vehemently opposed socialism; as a man used to getting his way, it is perhaps equally unsurprising that he was willing to actively suppress it on his campus. For the remainder of the decade, Beatty directly and indirectly played a role in its regulation.

When Currie died in 1933, Beatty “announced that there would be no need to appoint an acting principal, since he would make himself available on a daily basis.” For two years he guided the university and the search for a new principal. When one candidate not to his liking was offered an interview, he shut it down. The search was long, but no matter; “Beatty,” it was said, “sometimes seemed to think that McGill did not really need a [principal] as long as he was at the helm.”^[7] Nevertheless, in October 1935, Beatty and the board of governors finally settled on a candidate.

Arthur Eustace Morgan (1935-1937) was an administrator fresh from Hull College, England. He entered McGill’s principalship ready to take charge, but was soon “thoroughly disliked by almost everybody,” including Beatty, the board of governors, and most of the faculty and staff. His personality was largely to blame: “snobbish,” “tactless,” and “dictatorial” was his colleagues’ general consensus.^[8] But when it came to his clashes with Beatty and the governors, another factor created friction. Unlike his administrative colleagues, Morgan leaned left. He celebrated the presence of the socialist professors. When Beatty complained to him of Scott and company’s “preaching” of socialist “propaganda,” Morgan’s reply was not comforting: “I have no solution to offer for a problem which will I hope always be with us… [because] the only condition of its solution is the establishment of an authoritarian state, which God forbid!” Morgan’s only suggestion was to remind the professors “that rights imply responsibilities.”^[9] This attitude did not go over well with Beatty and the board of governors.

Morgan quickly found himself locked in a power struggle with Beatty and the governors. They had appropriated significant powers from the principal’s office while that position stood vacant. When Morgan stepped in, he expected to take those powers back, but the chancellor and his board were unwilling to relinquish many of them. Morgan and George McDonald, a governor and the chairman of the finance committee, fought for control from day one. By April 1937, the governor was blocking Morgan out of key budgetary matters. Morgan complained to Beatty of McDonald’s “incomprehensible attitude” and “puerile bad manners,” but found little sympathy. A week later, Morgan and McDonald had a “heated exchange” during an executive committee meeting. The board backed McDonald, and that was that. Morgan resigned four days later. Beatty’s response was curt: “The committee regretted the necessity of this course… but the action you have taken is in accordance with their views.”^[10] Conflicts over the principal’s proper role were a convenient way for the board to rid themselves of Morgan, but they were symptomatic of the deeper personal and political divisions within the administration.^[11]

Beatty was much more judicious in choosing the next principal. His hand-picked nominee was Lewis Douglas (1937-1939), a right-leaning American businessman who admired Beatty and had extensive experience in finance. Unsurprisingly, the governors accepted Beatty’s choice readily. Douglas was “charismatic” and “warm,” and quickly befriended Beatty and McDonald. He worked with them to draw up new statutes that restored powers to the principal, and took control of McGill with “a very, very firm [hand].”^[12] Clearly, when Beatty liked the principal, it was entirely possible for two strong personalities to work together.

As principal, Douglas preached that academic freedom came with academic responsibility. He wanted McGill to “be the forum for freely expressed opinion from all sides.” He therefore did not oppose the right of professors to teach about socialism, and in theory encouraged it: the socialist perspective was “part of the world in which we live,” he told Beatty, and therefore “students should be acquainted” with it. The real issue was that, according to Douglas, there were no professors at McGill competent to critically challenge socialism.^[13] He sought to remedy this perceived imbalance.

Douglas and Beatty spent almost a year fleshing out their plan. Their “well-considered programme” blocked junior professors from tenure and limited appointments of new professors to three- or five-year terms. Reappointment would fall to the exclusive purview of the board of governors. The goal was to cycle young professors through “and keep only those who fell in line with the board’s views.” They also sought to offset tenured socialist professors by introducing visiting professorships of three or so years, to be filled with more conformist voices. Significantly, these professorships would be filled by “the University, as distinct from departments or faculties.” The program claimed to be a mere counterweight to the socialists, but it effectively laid the groundwork to force out socialist professors and to prevent their replacement.^[14] Both Beatty and Douglas’s proclamations of academic freedom were thus not fully borne out by their executive actions.

Douglas resigned at the end of 1939 for personal reasons. But before he passed on the torch, he followed through on the spirit of his plans. He wrote a note informing Forsey that the young professor would not be reappointed in 1941. The notice was signed and delivered by Douglas’s successor, Frank Cyril James, but the purging of professors was Beatty and Douglas’s achievement. The scheme was executed carefully by Douglas, Beatty, and James, and the termination happened with little fanfare. Forsey himself did not know until much later the full details of his expulsion. The lack of clarity around his dismissal was intentional; neither Douglas nor James was desirous of the real motivation for it being known. Leonard Marsh, another outspoken socialist faculty member, was pushed out in a similar manner in Douglas’ final days in the principal’s chair. Scott, the more senior of the professors, was protected by his tenure—firing him wasn’t worth the public ordeal it would incite.^[15]

Frank Cyril James (1939-1962) had been hand-picked by Beatty and Douglas, and was no doubt inclined towards their perspective on socialism. James and Beatty also shared a tendency to cut the governors out of the decision-making process, and consult with only each other. It was James who suggested the nonrenewal of Forsey’s contract to the board of governors. Decades later, he recounted that “It was not a pleasant task and a lot of very unpleasant things were said about me.” Even then, however, he remained convinced that “this kind of decisive action is the only way to deal with a problem of this kind.” Although James accepted responsibility for Forsey’s dismissal, and had played a role in it, his expulsion of socialist faculty was largely a completion of what Beatty and Douglas had set into motion. The “two kingmakers” had clearly chosen their successor well.^[16]

Beatty’s influence was clear and ever-present throughout the thirties. He was constantly there, poking and prodding the principals to acknowledge the dangers of socialist professors, then to muzzle them, and finally to be rid of them. This is not to say that Beatty was the grand puppet master, and the principals merely his dancing marionettes. The board made itself heard, and the principals did not always take as strong a stance as Beatty would have liked. But when the unstoppable principals collided with the immovable chancellor, the aftermaths were revealing—one need only compare the relative fates of Morgan and Douglas. By playing gatekeeper to the principalship and collaborating on ever-more extreme measures, Beatty played a clear hand in the regulation and eventual expulsion of the socialist professors and their sympathetic principals.

Raffaella Cerenzia is a fourth-year undergraduate history student at McGill University.

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^[1] Dorothy McMurray, Four Principals of McGill: A Memoir 1929-1963 (Graduates’ Society of McGill, 1974), 31-32; Stanley Brice Frost, The Man in the Ivory Tower: F. Cyril James of McGill (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 2014), 53-54.

^[2] Sandra Djwa, The Politics of the Imagination: A Life of F.R. Scott (Douglas and McIntyre, 1989), 130; Michiel Horn, Academic Freedom in Canada: A History (University of Toronto Press, 1999), 128-130. Frost, Ivory Tower, 54.

^[3] Sir Arthur Currie to J.M. McConnell, 16 January 1933, McGill University Archives [MUA], RG2 – Sir Arthur Currie Collection [SACC], c49 c676 file 612, “Student Activities & Student Discipline: Labour Club; Canadian Commonwealth Federation.” Sir Arthur Currie to Ragnild Tait, 10 February 1933, MUA, RG2 – SACC, c49 c676 file 612; Djwa, The Politics of the Imagination, 132-133; Horn, Academic Freedom in Canada, 128-129, 132.

^[4] Horn, Academic Freedom in Canada, 129-131. A “poor” performance according to Currie, anyway.

^[5] Stanley Brice Frost, McGill University: For the Advancement of Learning, Volume II, 1895-1971 (McGill-Queen’s University Press, 1984), 189.

^[6] Edgar Andrew Collard, ed., The McGill You Knew: An Anthology of Memories, 1920-1960 (Longman Canada Limited, 1975), 253; Horn, Academic Freedom in Canada, 136. Beatty’s biographer, D.H. Miller-Barstow, describes the care that Beatty took to maintain his appearance. He was always “immaculately tailored” and “prided himself on his physical appearance.” He also purposely kept his desk clear of papers, so as to seem more impressive when he stood behind it. Curiously, Miller-Barstow also calls Beatty “a man who impressed without effort.” This line should be disregarded. Beatty had the benefits of economic and social capital, but I think that he shaped his imposing presence very consciously. D.H. Miller-Barstow, Beatty of the C.P.R.: A Biography (McClelland and Stewart Limited, 1951), 1-2; 164.

^[7] Frost, For the Advancement of Learning, 190; Miller-Barstow, Beatty of the C.P.R., 152; Collard, The McGill You Knew, 252.

^[8] Frost, For the Advancement of Learning, 192; Collard, The McGill You Knew, 236-237. When Morgan resigned and left for England, only three McGill people showed up to see him off: his secretary, “one professor, and one of our kindest governors.” McMurray, Four Principals of McGill, 39.

^[9] McMurray, Four Principals of McGill, 35; Frost, For the Advancement of Learning, 192, 195-196; Horn, Academic Freedom in Canada, 134.

^[10] McMurray, Four Principals of McGill, 36, 38; Miller-Barstow, Beatty of the C.P.R., 153; Frost, For the Advancement of Learning, 196.

^[11] This conclusion is also drawn by Barry Cahill, “Dismissal of a President: The Ordeal of Carleton Stanley at Dalhousie University, 1943-1945,” Acadiensis 31, no. 1 (Autumn 2001): 78; Don Nerbas, Dominion of Capital: The Politics of Big Business and the Crisis of the Canadian Bourgeoisie, 1914-1947 (University of Toronto Press, 2013), 150; and Horn, Academic Freedom in Canada, 138.

^[12] Frost, Ivory Tower, 54; Frost, For the Advancement of Learning, 198; McMurray, Four Principals of McGill, 41, 44-45; Miller-Barstow, Beatty of the C.P.R., 159; Collard, The McGill You Knew, 240, 246.

^[13] Collard, The McGill You Knew, 244; Frost, For the Advancement of Learning, 200, 203.

^[14] Horn, Academic Freedom in Canada, 293, 299; Nerbas, Dominion of Capital, 149; Frost, For the Advancement of Learning, 200-202.

^[15] F. Cyril James to Eugene Forsey, 17 June 1940, McGill University Archives [MUA], Fonds MG1038 – Eugene Alfred Forsey Fonds, “Corresp. with James abt. appt. 1940-1”; Frost, For the Advancement of Learning, 202; Horn, Academic Freedom in Canada, 142-144.

^[16] Horn, Academic Freedom in Canada, 141, 144; Collard, The McGill You Knew, 256; Frost, For the Advancement of Learning, 208.