National Affairs: The Meaning of Freedom

Albert Einstein, physicist, mathematician, cosmologist and grandfather of atomic energy, deplores the security system that the U.S. Government has established to cope with the atomic age. Last week, in a letter to the Reporter magazine, Professor Einstein wrote: “If I would be a young man again and had to decide how to make my living, I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or a peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances.”

Since he came to the U.S. in 1933 as a voluntary exile from Nazi Germany, Albert Einstein has enjoyed independence and freedom of inquiry at Princeton’s Institute for Advanced Study. He has been free to criticize the U.S. Government, and has criticized it freely. At Princeton he works with a man, J. Robert Oppenheimer, who was recently elected to a new term as head of the institute despite the fact that the U.S. Government reluctantly removed his clearance to classified atomic energy documents. In his statement last week (which was promptly used for Communist propaganda), Scientist Einstein, who may know more about the universe than any other human being, showed that he knows less about the meaning and responsibilities of freedom.