Today -100: June 4, 1925: Of new barbarians and bosh

Columbia Pres. Nicholas Murray Butler, addressing commencement exercises, denounces the “New Barbarians” who are trying to create a “sort of spineless corporate opinion which, operating by prohibitions and compulsions, aims to reduce all individuality, whether of mind or of character, to a gelatinous and wobbling mass.” He accuses Tennessee of “violently affronting the popular intelligence and [making] it impossible for a scholar to be a teacher in that state without becoming at the same time a law-breaker.” That’s a reference to the anti-evolution law, of course. He also deprecates Indiana, because, er, I’m not sure.

Anyway, there was a time when the Columbia administration was against spinelessness.

Tennessee Gov. Austin Peay, one of Butler’s New Barbarians, says evolution is “all bosh” and the Scopes trial won’t last more than 30 minutes.

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