15 Men, One Woman Receive Honoraries

Harvard today conferred honorary degrees on 15 men and one woman, including James B. Reston, columnist and vice president of the New York Times, John K. Fairbank '29, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History, and founder and director of Harvard's East Asian Research Center; and Cardinal Leon-Joseph Suenens of Belgium, world leader of the ecumenical movement in the Catholic Church.

Antonio Carrillo Flores, Mexico's Secretary of Foreign Relations, Luis A. Ferre, Governor of Puerto Rico, and Joseph Luns, Foreign Minister of the Netherlands and senior among foreign ministers of the world, received honorary Doctors of Law degrees.

At its 319th Commencement, Harvard singled out five men who have helped govern the University. In addition to Fairbank are: Baltimore lawyer William Luke Marbury, recently retired Senior Fellow of the Corporation; Thomas D. Cabot '19, a former Overseer and Trustee of Radcliffe College; Don K. Price, dean of the Kennedy School of Government; and James R. Reynolds '23, fundraising adviser to two Harvard presidents from 1949 to 1969. Reynolds received a Doctor of Humane letters; the other four received Doctors of Law.

Two blacks, Dorothy I. Height, Y. W. C. A. executive and President of the National Council of Negro Women, and Louis E. Martin, influential black journalist and special minorities advisor to Presidents Kennedy and Johnson, also received Doctors of Law.

In the arts, Harvard honored American composer Elliott C. Carter '30 with a Doctor of Music and architect Marcel Breuer, master of the famous Bauhaus in Dessau, Germany, with a Doctor of Arts.

Danish astrophysicist Bengt Stromgren of the University of Copenhagen received a doctorate of Science.

J. Edward Lumbard Jr. '22, Chief Judge of the U. S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit in New York, received a doctorate of Law.

Exercises

Today's commencement included a special address of concern from graduating students, read by James Foster, a graduating law student. Foster told the 15,000 persons in Tercentenary Theatre, "We do not accuse you today," and asked adults to join with American youth to stop the war in Southeast Asia and political repression at home.

For the first time in history, a woman undergraduate, Kirsten E. Mishkin '70, gave the Latin Oration. Her subject was Woman's Liberation. She was the only woman speaker.

Reston

A Pulitzer Prize winning journalist, Reston is perhaps the most popularly known honorary degree recipient in a group which heavily favors foreign dignitaries and sons of Harvard.

Graduated from the University of Illinois in 1932, he began his career as a publicist for the Cincinnati Baseball Club and sports writer for the Associated Press. He has been a former London and Washington correspondent for Associated Press and the New York Times, and headed the Washington Bureau of the Times before becoming vice president in 1969. Reston received a Doctor of Letters.

Cardinal Suenens has been one of the leaders in the liberalization of the Catholic Church. He became a Cardinal in 1962 and moderator of the Vatican II Council during the height of Pope John XXIII's papacy.

In conferring his honorary doctorate of Law, President Pusey said, "The dawning spirit of ecumenism is encouraged by the deep faith and liberal spirit of this dedicated man."

Fairbank

Fainbank, foremost U. S. expert on East Asian Studies, founded Harvard's East Asian Research Center in 1959, which now includes one of the most comprehensive China study programs in the world.

A former ambassador to China during World War II, Fairbank was falsely labeled a Communist during the McCarthy era for advocating that the United States accept the fact that Nationalist China had lost the war. In the '50's, the stigma of McCarthyism forced him to recede from public life and continue his teaching at Harvard.

Carrillo