Well, it's birth control, family planning. I guess HEW at one
time in the early Kennedy years decided there should be family planning
around the world. So they made money available to universities to set up
family planning centers. We set up one. The Population Center
it's called. It's like the Institute of Government
or the Early Learning Center. We have a bunch of centers and institutes
on this campus. This was the Population Center. Some people in the med
school thought this was important
Page 16 and they put in
for the grant. They got Moye Freymann who had been at Harvard in their
public health school to come down and head it and they made him a Kenan
Professor or something in the School of Public Health. His job was to
create and develop the Population Center which he did. It became one of
the foremost population centers of the world for study and advice and
library and research and everything. You know, you sort of grow, you
feed on what you have. So since we were the best, when the Carnegie
Foundation wanted to get something done they would give it to us to do
because we had the resources. Then we would expand and then we would be
even bigger and better and then somebody else would give us money.
Freymann was the heart and soul. He was just like Albert Coates who
developed the Institute of Government. Freymann developed the Population
Center and it expanded its bounds and it grew. I don't know;
there were a hundred people working at the Population Center. They had
projects all over the world. The way I first became acquainted with Mr.
Freymann was when an Iranian came into my office and said he had just
been fired from the Population Center and he was an Iranian from Iran
who had come here to get a degree in sociology and population control
and was really working for the Population Center and not in the
Department of Sociology. There was a large grant from the government of
Iran to the Population Center to work on population control in Iran.
This was the guy, I think he was related to the Shah or something, who
had come over there. Well, Freymann didn't like him for some
reason and fired him summarily. Well, the guy had come to me and I went
to
Page 17 see Freymann and I told him you
can't fire people summarily. He said, "Well, this
guy is in research on contract and he's not a professor and
he's a graduate student in sociology. He's not
really in the Population Center except we hired him to do a special job.
He didn't do it well and we're not going to renew
his contract. We're not violating academic freedom."
And I said, "Well, tell him why and give him a chance to
respond." He said, "He knows why." And I
said, "Well, put it in writing." He says, "I
don't have to bother with the likes of you." So I
didn't know what to do. The Iranian was ready to go back to
Iran or something, so he didn't want to file a law suit and
that was about the end of it. That's how I met Freymann and I
didn't like him, you know. I thought he had no feelings for
his underlings. He took a concept and built it into concrete and bricks
and bank accounts and libraries and everything. He was a great
administrator and maybe that's what you have to do to be a
great administrator. Then he himself went on a trip around the world to
check on all the various projects that were going on. And it was a two
month trip or something; maybe a month to visit all the projects. When
he was in India he got a telegram saying that he was removed from the
directorship. There was a board on the Population Center and it
consisted of maybe six people. And the med school and the School of
Public Health and the Department of Religion and sociology, you know;
that was the board. They had decided they didn't like the way
he was managing things, so they sent him a telegram and removed him from
the directorship while he was in India. So he came back immediately and
came to see me.
Page 18 So I looked at the telegram and I
looked at the board. I know them all. Most of them are good friends of
mine and allies in most things. One of them was John Graham who had been
a real leading light in the med school; great reputation for his work
and real concerned with social aspects of the world. He had been the
Vice President and I had been the President of the AAUP. So all the
people on this Population Center board I'd always thought of
as very close friends. So I wrote them all a letter and I said,
"Hey, you've gone overboard here and you forgot what
we're all about and that decency and democracy and due
process require that you tell him why you did it and give him a chance
to respond. He doesn't respond to you first, but then there
ought to be another group because you're his accusers and you
shouldn't be his judgers." So they wrote me back and
said, "Well, that's true for professors, but
he's still a Kenan Professor in the School of Public Health.
Directors have to earn their keep every day and they have no
rights." They weren't going to tell him why they
fired him.