September 24, 1923

Speaking on “The Remoter Environment of Vassar” at Convocation, President MacCracken examined the dubious value given to academic judgment by the general public. “I must confess it does not always reassure us,” he said, “when we seem to vote on the unpopular side. Perhaps it is our fault that something derogatory attaches to the word ‘academic.’ We are going to rid ourselves of it and make academic judgments valued by our fellow citizens, so that they will turn to our judgments with at least as much attention as the people of a neighborhood valley over here to the East night before last turned to a flaming cross on a hillside and realized that the Ku Klux Klan was also in this environment, along with Washington Irving and Hendrick Hudson.”

The New York Times