Advertisement

Jordan Talks At Radcliffe's 71st Opening

President Says Free Thought Can Counteract Communism; Praises General Education

Radcliffe's President Jordan emphasized the need for a university's untrammeled search for truth in the face of Communism and landed the opportunities of a liberal education in an address given at the First Congregational Church in the exercises marking the formal opening of the college's seventy-first year.

"We have nothing to fear (from communism) so long as we come to understand the nature of our own culture and remain free to estimate coolly the forces which account for the virulent vitality of Communism in certain quarters of the earth," he stated.

"Climate of Discussion"

President Jordan proposed that this be accomplished by preserving here "a climate of opinion and discussion" and coming to rational decisions "after the examination of all data and all ideas."

"All our complex political and economic uncertainties are being focused not on a program of constructive consideration and remedy but on an essentially negative fear of Communism," President Jordan said.

Advertisement

In heralding the inauguration at Radcliffe and Harvard of "the full program of General Education," he praised the results of six years of experimentation in achieving a "balance between liberality and specialty."

GE Trains for Marriage

"I am particularly confident that it is well conceived to meet the needs of the educated woman in our society," he continued. President Jordan opined that married women require a greater degree of adaptability of mind and flexibility of talent than do their husbands, and that these are the qualities that the General Education program seeks to impart.

The president made a plea to the Annex student body to devote four full years to higher education. One hundred thirty-eight 'Cliffe students left school, primarily for marriage, during the past year. He commented that the academic mortality rate on the other hand was exceptionally low, averaging one out of 100.

Advertisement