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The AAUP Remembers Former President Glass
By Jordan E. Kurland
H. Bentley Glass, a major figure in the leadership of the American scientific community and of the AAUP, died on January 16, the eve of his ninety-ninth birthday. He was professor of biology and genetics at Johns Hopkins University from 1948 to 1965, when he went on to serve as vice president for academic affairs at the State University of New York at Stony Brook until his retirement in 1976.
Glass's contributions to science were many and varied. A prolific writer, he was the author of several books, more than four hundred articles, innumerable columns for scientific journals, and a regular feature in the Baltimore Evening Sun. He served terms as president of the American Association for the Advancement of Science, the American Society of Human Genetics, and the American Institute of Biological Sciences; as editor of Science, Science Monthly, and the Quarterly Review of Biology; and as chair of the committee for biology and medicine of the Atomic Energy Commission and the space science board of the National Research Council. He was also national president of Phi Beta Kappa.
Glass joined the AAUP in 1942. He was chapter president at Johns Hopkins University in 1948-49, and he began his national AAUP service in 1949 with election to the Council. Together with Ralph Fuchs, then the AAUP's general secretary, Glass took the lead in moving the Association (and higher education generally) from the depths of McCarthyism, chairing in 1955 and 1956 the AAUP's Special Committee on Academic Freedom and Tenure in the Quest for National Security. He began nearly two decades of membership on Committee A on Academic Freedom and Tenure in 1956, serving as committee chair until 1958 when he took office for a two-year term as AAUP president.
Historian Walter Metzger, who began his own distinguished AAUP career under Glass, remembers him as follows.
In mourning the death of H. Bentley Glass, the Association is reminded of how fortunate it was that the gifts of this world-famous geneticist, adviser to numerous scientific agencies, and respected public intellectual were placed at the disposal of the AAUP before the McCarthy era had fully run its course. Serving successively as chair of the special committee, chair of Committee A, and AAUP president, Bentley Glass developed a compelling rationale for protecting academic freedom from such popular Cold War devices as loyalty oaths and disclaimer affidavits. He saw to it that a backlog of AAUP-reported "Communist" and "Fifth Amendment" cases, which had not theretofore appear-ed in print, finally saw the light of day. He worked to secure the censure of administrations for firing faculty members in order to appease an inflamed public on the strength of charges that were repressive on their face or never proved. With a gentlemanliness that was his trademark and that enhanced his devotion to principle, he thereby helped the Association retrieve its voice.
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