University Welcome Extended to Students From Foreign Lands

Below are excerpts from an address made by Professor Manley O. Hudson, Bemls Professor of International Law, to students in Phillips Brooks House. It is taken in part from the current issue of the Alumni Bulletin.

I am delighted to have the privilege of joining in welcoming to Cambridge so many students from other lands. I take it that some of you have but recently arrived in America, and it is a great pleasure to me to assist in your induction into membership in Harvard University. Our University is not old in comparison with some of the universities in other countries. It has not yet celebrated its three-hundredth anniversary. But it has earned a reputation which I suppose is one of the reasons for your presence here, and which I hope you will not find to be undeserved.

In one of the older statutes of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, which still govern the University, a reference is made to the "republic of letters," with the interests of which the University is identified, and it is into Harvard's part of the "republic of letters" that you are welcomed first of all. I hope you will find in it an inspiring home. None of us would care to attempt a definition of citizenship in such a republic. Certainly all of those who would claim it do not merit such distinction. Fortunately, it is a republic without either boundaries or territory and its immigrants are not restricted to any quota. I hope you will find that it exists as dominant here as in the universities of your native lands.

Freedom of Learning Ahead

I think it is one of the first tests of citizenship in this republic that one should hold himself free from bondage to authorities in his thinking and in his manners, and it is the opportunity for the enjoyment of such freedom which we would seek to maintain for you at Harvard. The times in which we live have got very far away from those in which wandering scholars exercised the leadership in learning. Few if any communities still exist in which the approach to learning has not been paved with biases of all sorts. The commonest of these biases seem to spring in modern times from the allegiance which is bound up with religion and nationality. But I believe that no communities exist where such biases count for less than in some of the great universities of our time. Whatever be your religion or your nationality, whether indeed you care to claim either, I hope that you will find here a welcome which will encourage you to pursue learning with the utmost freedom. We have a habit of dividing the members of the University into two classes, professors and students, but I often find myself dissatisfied with such a classification. It draws a very misleading distinction between our members, for I am sure you will find that most if not all of those who are catalogued as professors are themselves students, busily engaged in the prosecution of their studies, and I suspect you will find that many of your best teachers here, whose teaching you will value most highly in later years, will be found among those who are catalogued as students. We welcome you who come from other lands precisely because you come in the double capacity of student and teacher. If any such distinction must persist, I wish there were a third class of our members who were a third class of our members who were not denominated professors in the sense of having prescribed "courses" to teach, and who were not listed as students having prescribed "courses" to take. I should like to think of a university as a community, where hospitality awaits any seeker for truth who seeks it because he enjoys the seeking or because he would add to the store of knowledge which is the heritage of his generation.

Every Resource at Disposal

Those of you who have come to Harvard for the first time will doubtless find here things which make your life different from that in the universities of your native lands. You may find some of our many systems of instruction strange. You may think that some of the requirements of courses and credits are too rigid. You may feel that our community puts too much emphasis on the sports which we call athletics. But I hope none of these things will discourage you, and I think you will not find a lack of facilities for scholarship. Magnificent libraries and laboratories are open to you, and scholars of experience in almost any field are here to assist your explorations. I think that some of you will find that your greatest handicap will be that which Dean Ezra Thayer once characterized as "the central tragedy of life," that there are only 24 hours in the day.

Of course all of your 24 hours cannot be given to the republic of letters at Harvard. You will want to carry back to your country, also, impressions of the republic of the United States of America, and in after years they may be as significant to you as your life in this republic of letters. I hope you will improve every opportunity to study and reflect upon America. Its size will baffle you, perhaps, and I am sure you will want to suspend your judgments until you have had some experience with American life, if possible in other parts of America. It is not an easy task for any of us to get accurate and adequate impressions of a country which is not our own. Few men know much about their own country, and to train oneself as an observer abroad usually requires much experience. There are many things in which all countries and all civilizations are mor or less alike. Thanks to this modern era of communication, we draw in all parts of the world upon much the same sources of supply.

I am sure that happy days and happy evenings await you here. I hope you will find everywhere that hospitality which is always given to American students so generously when they go abroad. And when you return to your native land, I hope you will carry with you some affection for Harvard as a republic of letters and some understanding of the republic which, we know as America.