Academic Freedom Imperiled: The Mccarthy Era At The University Of Nevada

4: Out with Stout

72 Academic Freedom Imperiled Allvar Jacobson had all spoken of his overt salary discrimination in their published resignation letters. Stout, however, maintained that salary increases were submitted to him by the deans and he, himself, never changed any of them. He required the deans to use a twenty-one-point ‘‘check sheet’’ on which to base their evaluations. In addition, regardless of the deans’ personal feelings and comments, which were important, each college had a particular amount budgeted and had to spread the money accordingly. Stout’s admission that he did, on occasion, ask the deans ‘‘why or if they were sure’’ about a particular increase implies that he had an unspoken power over their decisions , despite his declaration that he ‘‘couldn’t browbeat his deans.’’44 Now, as Stout presented his list of salary increases to the regents, Thompson challenged his figures and suggested changes. The regent believed that the 1953 legislature had voted an across-the-board 15 percent cost-of-living increase for all faculty. However, many faculty had been discriminated against and did not receive that large of an increase; therefore, he believed that every person who was on the faculty in April 1953 ‘‘should be getting paid at least 15 percent more than he was receiving at that time.’’ Thompson further asserted that to not do so would only compound the impropriety committed in 1953. Stout immediately opposed Thompson’s idea, not only disagreeing with the across-the-board interpretation, but also stating, ‘‘[I]f we do this,wewould be saying that we were completely wrong in 1953 and I do not believe we were.’’ At this point in the argument, regent Hardy leaped to Stout’s defense and accused Thompson of ‘‘attacking the work of the board in 1953 unfairly.’’ He claimed that the board had not been discriminatory in 1953 and was not being discriminatory now, except perhaps in Thompson’s avid advocacy of certain faculty.45 Thompson’s motion failed, but wishing to maintain his profaculty position while still preserving his point of disagreement, he abstained from voting on the originally proposed salary-increase schedule. Later in the meeting , however,Thompson made his point more directly when he voted against increasing President Stout’s salary for the coming year. Salary discrimination was not the only point of contention between Thompson and Stout. At that same Board of Regents meeting, a short argument between them ensued over ‘‘the manner in which faculty members should be allowed to participate in the operation of university affairs.’’ Stout stated, ‘‘An uninformed person should not have the right to place a block in the way of an informed person in another area.’’ He did add, however, that ‘‘progress depends on each faculty member having freedom in his own field.’’ Thompson’s rebuttal, undoubtedly directed at an earlier statement made by Stout, was that ‘‘[t]he great value of a university is that it pools knowledge from many fields.’’ After the regent had expanded on thevalue and desirability Let the Investigations Begin 73 of general faculty meetings, Stout rejoined with, ‘‘[I]f you are going to go out of an area to get advice on it, you may as well go down on the street and take a laborer.’’46 Thompson, on the other hand, believed that the university had functioned very well while general faculty meetings had been an integral part of its governance. It was exchanges such as this one between Stout and Thompson that heralded the beginnings of the change in the public’s attitude toward Minard Stout and his administration of the university. Even though the majority of members of the Board of Regents were staunchly in his camp, the fact that a regent was speaking publicly and openly challenging Stout’s administrative ideology increased public interest. Until this point in time, most of the disapproval had been registered by members of the faculty, whom the average citizen considered spoiled at best and leftist at worst, by elitists who had higher social or political aspirations in mind, and by ‘‘outsiders’’ who would not know what was best for Nevada if someone told them. Current criticism of Stout’s administrative techniques was coming from the very source of all his previous support: the Board of Regents. That, coupled with the recent willingness of the notoriously tightfisted legislature to spend twenty-five thousand dollars on an impartial and objective investigation of the entire University of Nevada administrative structure, was causing many in the general...