Ford Compares Harvard To French Aristocracy

Franklin L. Ford, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, extended a warm welcome to the 92nd session of the Harvard Summer School to 400 students at the Convocation held in sweltering Sanders Theatre Tuesday night.

In introducing the academic community, Dean Ford discussed the place of the Summer School and major problems confronting the University. The Summer School presents "a happy example of two of the nine faculties that that make the University."

The University could not operate without a "certain amount of vagueness," he said, and quoted President Pusey who once suggested it was held together by "a common devotion to a central heating plan."

Dean Ford likened the University to the pre-1789 French monarchy, maintaining it is "irrational, frequently unjust, tradition-bound, and culturally distinctive." If we tried to make sense out of it, it "would come down in a shower of blood," he concluded. It is in a state of balance in which all parts are kept going in "the compromising process of institutional life."

The need for more facilities is a pressing challenge, Dean Ford said. Although this is a period of active building, it is "just a drop in the bucket compared to what the University needs to keep up." He cited the need for more medium-sized lecture halls as well as expanded undergraduate housing.

Althought "not dramatized in masonry,' the new study and research programs are exciting just the same, Ford said. While new groups of subjects in linguistics, history of science, and regional studies "might be nerve wracking, they are not bewildering," he maintained.

The history department, the largest in the College and one in which both graduate and undergraduate students share the same faculty, will institute a new graduate program this fall. Graduate students will audit courses, enroll in one seminar, and take part in colloquiums with all the faculty in their area.

Dean Ford also outlined a "package fellowship program" which will insure five years of support toward a Ph.D. Preparation for generals would fill the first two years. The second two the recipient would hold a teaching fellowship while beginning work on his thesis, and the fifth year would be devoted to finishing the thesis. Ford maintains that, among other advantages, this would ensure better teaching and feedback to undergraduates.

Thomas E. Crooks, Director of the Summer School, officially opened the Summer School and introduced Dear Ford. He urged students to familiarize themselves with the campus, find Holden Chapel, notice tablets commemorating Civil War dead in Memorial Hall, and read Samuel Eliot Morison's History of Harvard.