Harvard Monks

"There are certain to be engineers for generations to come, occupying positions of respect and importance in the community, no matter what sort of social order we may have. ... It is conceivable that a type of society might arise in which there would be great material prosperity and a highly developed technology but no spiritual and intellectual freedom. Under such stifling conditions all vital interest in art and literature would fade and enthusiasm for pure thought would vanish; what would remain would be a barbarism which all the radios and automobiles and skyscrapers in the world would not conceal. In such a desert, the applied scientists, essential for a smooth operation of the complex mechanism, might be the only men with a true education. The monks in the Dark Ages preserved the remnants of one civilization to enable another to come to life. Perhaps, in some measure at some time, the scientist and engineer may have a similar challenge."

Harvard's careful young Chemist-President James Bryant Conant was last week making his second annual report. He proposed to establish an oasis against a possible return of the Dark Ages by making Harvard's laggard, half-undergraduate School of Engineering into a first-rate graduate school.

Newsworthy were three other proposals in President Conant's report: P:Many a scholar retreats into his own specialty, loses sight of outside progress. President Conant would appoint a select corps of "professors without portfolio'' to bridge the artificial gaps which over-specialization leaves between fields of study. "We need a certain number of university professors with roving commissions whose teaching and creative work shall not be hampered by departmental considerations."

P:Harvard freely accepts students who know no Latin but gives them an S. B. instead of an A. B. degree. Wrote President Conant: "For years the status of the S. B. degree has been absurd. ... I hope that before long the faculty will ... go to the root of the matter by eliminating the Latin requirement for the A. B. degree."

P:Last year Harvard bunched some of its scrappy little scholarships into a few fat $1,000 fellowships for brilliant students with scanty resources. President Conant would make that practice an established policy, extend it to all departments of the university.

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