The self- righteousness, the blind lack of concern for the rights and feelings of other human beings, the zealotry and opinionatedness of such a letter- above all in an academic community- are sickening to say the least.

Distortion, misrepresentation, accusation and now increasingly a tendency toward the imposition of unitary views. And this within universities. How have we come to such a pass? It is hard to say, but I suppose many of us must share in the blame: Those of us in positions to have moved more rapidly than we have to correct obvious abuses and shortcomings which have festered too long among us. Those responsible for instruction too long reluctant to re-examine traditional offerings and teaching methods, too little ready, not to abandon, but to enliven courses which have ceased to speak to the condition of the new young and which have failed to make attractive to them the achievement of the degree of freedom we enjoy, so painfully and slowly won. Those of various kinds, militantly on the defensive, disinclined to allow any claims of discontent or to make any concessions to the fierce urgency of the desire for reform that now rages among us, a rage obviously not without justification.

I refer here, of course, to a true decide widely held, not to that deceitful McCarthy kind which merely masks a drive for power. Much of the explanation for the growth among us of intolerant attitudes and the acceptance of destructive styles of behavior which should be anathema in academic societies is undoubtedly to be found in such considerations. But not all of it.

A not inconsiderable part of the explanation for the unfortunate change in this and other academic communities is to be charged to the many in all such groups who, like the honest burghers of the Weimar Republic, peace-loving, tolerant, with no desire to impose their views on others, have been unwilling to pass critical judgment on only of their kind. Where critical judgment fails error quickly moves in.

Many of us have something to answer for here. We have been too ready simply to hope that the problem would go away. Unwilling to find fault, reluctant to look into unpleasant facts and call them by their right names, eager to avoid controversy, trying above all to be understanding, perhaps a majority of us have been less insistent than we might- while continuing patiently to practice restraint- to observe the scholar's inescapable obligation for critical analysis and hard appraisal, or the citizen's duty to work strenuously to improve, but not to destroy, the hardwon structures of our public life. Not unlike those who twenty years ago imagined and deeply hoped there was something to be said for McCarthy. Looked at candidly it seems to me we have contributed unwittingly to the disturbing and unwelcome evil we now lament.

THE ANALYSIS can be carried a step further. It is my conviction that deceitful talk and the tendencies toward coercive action could not have made the inroads they have in academic communities in recent years had all of us to whom they are deeply repulsive been more ready to oppose them. That is part of the story. But only part. Deeper is the fact that underlying and even supporting the many disturbances which have shaken our campuses in recent years is an as yet only vaguely articulated, but nevertheless widely-shared, feeling of revulsion against the values and modes of living of the enlightened society based on reason, tolerance and the advancement of science which humane people have dreamed about, and have through generations been struggling to create.

Somehow in your time for many the taste for this long wished-for kind of life has gone flat. Its authenticity and its attractiveness have lost their charm. In the university world this is a present major problem, perhaps our most frightening one. But whatever the deepest origins of our current troubles, we need not wait on their full explication to acknowledge that their effects on higher education in your time have been, at the best least, jarring.

I am sorry to speak so somberly and critically on this occasion, but I feel I must. Your years at Harvard have been among the most tormented that have ever beset institutions of higher learning in this country. The effect of these years on each of you is something which only you can assess. Probably it will become clear with the passing of time. But troubled as the years have been I cannot believe- at least I do not want to believe- the effect will prove to have been wholly negative.

You have had to adjust rather fast, for it is not games you have been playing here during these years but rather the real thing. Yet amidst the upsetting alarums and excursions occasioned during your years in college by a determined few who have worked consistently to attract attention to themselves by misrepresenting what we are about, as you have gone ahead with your work, you have made clear one hopeful sign. That is, your generation's vigorous assertion that you will not be satisfied with a learning or a way of life whose most convincing credentials are only that they have been accepted before. You have professed convincingly that you will not be content with a learning which has not been freshly authenticated; and you have also made clear that you will have little respect for a learning which does not carry at one time both a dimension of deep personal involvement and social outreach.

No one can fault you here. But we would be disturbed- many of us not of your generation who have gone before- if there were any implication in your valid fresh insight that depth of concern has somehow now made knowledge less valuable, perhaps even unnecessary, or that strong feeling and conviction of rightness have done away with the need for- indeed with respect for- rigorous intellectual discrimination, regard for individuals as opposed to masses of people, and a restraining awareness of the dubiety of all human ends.

The problems which concern you are not different from the problems which concern the rest of us. Nor are they to be understood as being simply ignorantly of our creation. Their origins are deep in the texture of things. Nor are they to be eradicated quickly by demand and demonstration. Relief can come only as they are attacked from bases deep set in exploration and knowledge and with determination to stay on the job.

What then can I say to you at the end of your college years? It must be, I think, that neither unreasoning zealotry nor despair is an acceptable attitude for Harvard men. You have seen much of one and, I suspect, have at least occasionally been tempted by the other. It has been said that your generation is the first in America to have grown up without optimism. This is a sad commentary if true. Personally I do not believe it is, or at least that it need be.

It has been remarked by many, however, that you have a widespread and deep feeling of helplessness because you see so many things that need to be set right and feel so powerless to effect change. If so, such feeling is not without justification. But you must not assume you are the first to have felt this way, for it is a feeling with which the concerned have always had to contend.

In such mood it is easy to denounce, to find fault, to make unjust accusations, to visit the shortcomings of the world, and of ourselves, on scapegoats- even to light fires or throw stones- for personal relief or for exploitation-easy and totally unworthy. It is more difficult to maintain a realistic sense of human limitation, to refuse to become frustrated and angry; to analyze, to assess, to seek to understand and explain; to determine to be adult and fair; and thus to work patiently to improve while refusing to succumb to either cynicism or hopelessness. It is a long way around, but it is the civilized way, and the only way for those who have come truly to understand the role of humane learning.

It is this kind of behavior which Harvard has always wanted to teach- or rather has hoped that it might in some degree exemplify in its teachers and teachings, and so strongly represent that those coming here to learn would inevitably find it for themselves- and finding it, be beguiled by its charm and sign on for life in allegiance to it.