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To Dr. Albert Shaw, Editor-in-Chief of the Review of Reviews, with a typed copy of a letter from David S. Jordan of Stanford University to Dr. Ross, June 15, [1900], sent to Shaw by Ross with his signed note: “This letter is confidential and I am not at liberty to print it. It must not be published, quoted, or even alluded to. Even the phraseology should not be followed closely. Please keep it in your own hands and return it to me when you are through with it….” With Benjamin I. Wheeler. Typed Letter Signed as President of the University of California. Berkeley, Calif. December 8, 1900. 1pg., marked “Confidential”. To Dr. Shaw. With 3 original mailing envelopes. Edward A. Ross was a 26 year-old Professor of Political Economy at Cornell when he received a faculty appointment at the newly-established Stanford University. During seven years of Stanford teaching, he was outspoken in his “progressive” political and economic views, including his criticism of Chinese immigration and the use of Chinese coolie labor in railroad construction; this angered the University’s benefactor, Jane Lathrop Stanford, whose late husband had made his fortune as a railroad magnate. (Ironically, Ross’ “progressive” position on immigration appears, in retrospect, to be unabashed racism). At Mrs. Stanford’s insistence, Stanford President David Starr Jordan fired Ross. Other Stanford faculty members resigned in protest. This triggered a national debate about protecting academic freedom of speech in American universities. During that controversy, Ross corresponded with sympathetic journalist Albert Shaw, who had also been a Cornell Professor before editing the leading American journal of progressive reform. Ross first sent Shaw – in confidence – a copy of the letter he had received from President Jordan explaining that Mrs. Stanford “likes you personally, and respects your brilliancy”, and, while having “no desire to limit freedom of speech…feels that the reputation of the University for serious conservatism” was impaired by “hasty acceptance” of “social and political fads” not approved by “conservative thinkers” and businessmen. While she was indeed disturbed by Ross’ views on immigration, her greater concern was for “the good name of the University” in upholding what Jordan called “the status quo”. Ross’ accompanying letter to Shaw said that Jordan had been placed in an “intolerable position” in “seeming to restrict free speech”, which “galled him into resentment toward me…”, being “alarmed lest Mrs. Stanford should break with him” because he had made no secret that it was her demand that Ross be fired. A week later, the President of the University of California, Benjamin Ide Wheeler, sent Shaw still another confidential letter lamenting the “sharply divided” academic opinion on the Ross case, especially at Stanford, where “two hostile camps” were divided by “very bitter feeling”. Wheeler noted that Jordan had privately defended Ross and “urged Mrs. Stanford, in every possible manner, to desist from her resolution that Ross must go” – until Ross dishonorably revealed things Jordan had told him in confidence, making public statements “which he had no business to make at all.” Ross himself was “not a true university man…has not the university scientific spirit”; “his place is not in a university faculty”, but “the way in which he has been dislodged” and “the spirit in which it was done is entirely wrong.” Moreover, “there is no doubt that Mrs. Stanford, and her opinions concerning him, were the sole cause of his removal.” These three letters together provide a nuanced behind-the-scenes view of the first nationally-prominent academic freedom cause célèbre in America.