Two Presidents

When leaders of American education take a close look at the world and draw some conclusions, the result is usually a speech. At Harvard, it is a baccalaureate address. It is interesting to compare two of these--President Conant's to the Class of 1952 yesterday and President Lowell's to the Class of 1927. Twenty-five years ago, President Lowell told the graduating class that "we enjoy, work because we feel that it is worth doing. It is worth doing because in some form it will endure." In its day, this was considered a good practical philosophy. It gave members of the Class of '27 a rationale for the work they were to do in the world--however fascinating or mundane it was. It gave them hope that perhaps their personal success may be turned to a better end.

But today, the graduate is not entering a world as devoid of tensions and disorder as that of 1927. It was easy then for President Lowell to say "that one is working for an end outside and above himself, that one's labor contributes to a lofty purpose, is what makes it, and with it, makes life itself, worthwhile; and the more distant the end, the more grander the prospect." It did not matter then that President Lowell did not say what this ideal would be, of how vague and hard to reach the distant goal really is. For, in the blur of memory, 1927 seems a calm, untroubled year.

But today the world, as President Conant noted yesterday, is "poised between war and peace"; it is a period of extreme uncertainty. Too much has happened in the last 25 years to make the members of the class of 1952 believe that beyond mundane effort lies a nebulous ideal. To those who "would win more victories for humanity," President Conant reminded that the conviction of Alger Hiss and the confession of Klaus Fuchs have been heavy blows against the tradition of progress through reform and that now "a dark blanket of public suspicion woven by the same type of persons who have always fought the reformer but now aided by the revelations of the traitorous actions of a few fanatics."

Yet despite this, Conant, unlike Lowell, saw hope that the members of the class of 1952 could attain a practical ideal--not the hazy and distant ideal of Lowell. Quoting Horace Mann that one should "be ashamed to die until you have won some victory for humanity," Conant prophesized that the members of 1952 will be given "the privilege of making the reformer once again a highly respected though bitterly controversial figure" who "will forge new tools with which to reshape our American democracy to meet a continuously changing technological civilization."

Lowell may have presented the members of the class of 1927 with a practical philosophy; it was well in keeping with the spirit of the day. But too much has happened in the past twenty-five years to permit graduating seniors still to hope that through some method their efforts might be means to a greater end. Lowell presented a vague rationalization for worldly gain. Conant likewise has a practical philosophy, but one with practical goals too. He saw the preservation of democracy as the end, and the work of the reformer as the means to this end.