Mr. Kennedy in Boston

In his speech at the centennial observations of Boston College Saturday, President Kennedy said, "We are learning to talk the language of progress and peace across the barriers of sect and creed. It seems reasonable to hope that a similar process may be taking place across the quite different barrier of the higher learning.... The new realities of our day have combined to intensify the focal role of the university.... Accelerating change is the one universal human prospect. The universities must help."

Not only the natural sciences require "better work, deeper understanding, high education," he added. "I stand squarely with those who insist that at every level of learning there must be an equal concern for history, for letters, and the arts."

Harvard knows too well what Mr. Kennedy's first remarks often mean: little more than the abduction of her professors, and the purchase of their research time and loyalties. It remains to be seen whether any significance should be attached to his expression of equal concern for the studies that cannot directly help run the government. In the recent past, Mr. Kennedy's sympathies in education have gone unaffected, largely for lack of his own support. Hopefully, he will convert his statements of Saturday into more than centennial pronouncements.