Advertisement

Genuine Scholars A Hidden Army, LaFarge Declares

The role to today's scholar, in the "future period of general debate" will be to seek a wider and deeper basis for co-operation among men, Rev. John LaFarge '01, S.J., told the annual meeting of the Harvard Chapter of Phi Beta Kappa yesterday at Sanders Theatre.

Speaking after the business meeting where six honorary members and 80 seniors were elected to the society, the noted author, editor, and cleric used the ending of segregation as an example of "the True Face of Our Country." Segregation's end is more than just an isolated example of American opinion, he said. "The human race does not march forward by blind impulse," he explained; "it moves forward because people will choose for it to move ahead."

The newly-elected honorary members of Phi Beta Kappa are:

Gardner Cox '28 of Cambridge, artist.

William Bentinck-Smith, Assistant to the President of Harvard University.

Advertisement

Arthur Amory Houghton, Jr. '29, Director of the Corning Glass Works.

Donald Oenslager '23, stage designer, Yale drama professor.

John Lincoln Sweeney, Curator of the Farnsworth and Poetry Rooms in Lamont Library, Phi Beta Kappa Poet for 1954.

Citing the important effect the Court decision will have on opinion abroad, he examined the role of every segment of the American population in implementing it. "The story I should like most to stress for our foreign friends and visitors is that of the great army of the forgotten or even the unknown: dedicated people, who worked in obscurity for the education and the inner development of the racial minorities, particularly in the South. . . ."

These people are liberals, LaFarge Continued, "liberals in the most weighty sense of the word. . . . Such people are not the most interesting kind of liberal; they do not breed aphorisms or soothe wounded feelings. But they get things done."

The scholar, then, is not the irrational, ranting abolitionist type. They will search for deeper meanings. "They will ask what are we, all of us, here on earth for anyhow. . . . They will inquire about the meaning of men's dialogue with one another, and whether all human dialogue may not resolve itself in the last analysis into a dialogue with the God who put us here."

Religion, therefore, has a definite place in scholarship. Future scholars "should feel free to study and reappraise the connection between religion--including organized, dogmatic religion--and a liberal policy of universal human rights."

But the misuse of religion contains great dangers, LaFarge continued. Citing heinous crimes committed in religion's name, he said "what certain people may have derived from the misuse of religious doctrine is not necessarily to be ascribed to the nature of religion itself, but rather to its use emotionally as a handy instrument."

Following LaFarge's address, John L. Sweeney, poet and curator of the poetry rooms, delivered a poem, "An Arch for Janus," written for the occasion. In homage to Henry Adams, it was inspired by the line "All experience is an arch, to build upon," in "The Education of Henry Adams."

The Phi Beta Kappa Society also announced yesterday the election of the following 80 members from the Class of 1954.

Advertisement