President Roosevelt's Blunder

The Planet criticizes President Roosevelt for “butting in” to the affairs of Harvard University. Its president, C.W. Eliot claims that if President Roosevelt disagrees with their response to two students’ violations, then he is “upholding dishonorable conduct.”

It is almost inconceivable that a man of the intelligence and prominence of President Roosevelt’s standing should have so far forgotten the ordinary rules of propriety as to “butt in” the internal affairs of Harvard University and especially to virtually uphold culprits who has violated the rules governing that institution. He has set such high ideals himself and has become to such an extent the expounder of all great principles that we have been led to wonder by what course of reasoning he could take issue with the distinguished presiding officer of Harvard University. He argues about punishing the innocent with the guilty and making the innocent suffer and yet this is precisely what he did and still insists upon doing in the Brownsville case. But here is President Roosevelt’s letter: “To President C. W. Eliot, Cambridge: “It is not possible and would it not be more fitting and just to substitute another punishment for Fish and Morgan, if, as is stated, they merely took away a book which they were permitted to use in the library? It seems to us, and we feel sure to the great body of graduates, it is unfair and unnecessary to make other suffer for an offense of this kind, for which some other punishment might surely be found. And here is President Eliot’s reply: “Each man did a dishonorable thing. One violated in his private interest and in a crooked way a rule made in the common interest, while the other gave a false name and did not take subsequent opportunity to give his own. The least possible punishment was putting them on probation, but that drops them from the crews. “A keen and sure sense of honor being the finest result of college life, I think the college and graduates should condemn effectively dishonorable conduct. The college should also teach that one must never so scurvy things in the supposed interest or for the pleasure of others. Now here is a case where Mr. Roosevelt woke up the wrong passenger, if he expected mild treatment at the hands of the scholarly president of Harvard University. It is a rebuke with a handle to it, indicating that there is more of the same kind if he chooses to return to the attack. Mr. Roosevelt is a graduate and President Elliot says that he think that the college and the graduates should condemn effectively dishonorable conduct. This means that Mr. Roosevelt is virtually upholding dishonorable conduct and would use to gratify social appetites and pleasures, men who were dishonorable to satisfy the craving. This places the distinguished statesman upon a plane with those colored men, who he declared to be guilty of the crime of silence. In this case, he is himself convicted of the offense of condoning wrong doing to gratify anima pleasures. But President Eliot was not satisfied with what down here, we call a back-handed lick for he followed it up with the toe of his shoe in a most vital part of his anatomy, when he concludes: “The college should also teach that one must never do scurvy things in the supposed interest or for the pleasure of others.” This is a bitter dose, Mr. Roosevelt; but who will say that you did not get what you deserved”

“President Roosevelt's Blunder,” Black Virginia: The Richmond Planet, 1894-1909, accessed February 15, 2026, https://blackvirginia.richmond.edu/items/show/647.