ABSTRACT

In the 1890s the issue of academic advocacy left the scholar's den and the university president's study to claim front-page attention. Social scientists advocated measures that threatened powerful interests. But scientific progress also spurred opponents of outspoken academic social scientists to find ways of restricting the range and extent of their advocacy. As social scientists rested their claim to authority more and more exclusively on the special competence that the scholarly life conferred, both the substance and the manner of their advocacy became more critical in enforcing their claims. Anything that impugned objectivity endangered the rationale that scholars offered for their special mission. Thus objectivity and advocacy were often in conflict, even in the minds of leading professional social scientists. Through the issues raised by confrontations with critics outside the profession and the discussions each case provoked within, the limits of acceptable advocacy were gradually defined.