Engell says it's a matter of "concern" that the university's focus is now primarily on the written, rather than the spoken word.

"We aren't cultivating rhetoric and getting more people to do it," he says. "Public speaking is a very important skill to many professions, unless you are doing isolated forms of research."

According to Memorial Church Minister and Plummer Professor of Christian Morals Peter J. Gomes, who will also be judging the Boylston contest, rhetoric was given a more significant role in early American history. An eloquent man was also an educated man, he says.

"In the late 17th century in order to even get a degree, students would have to give a public disquisition open to any alumni member to critique," Gomes says.

Currently, the only rhetoric course taught at the University is Engell's the "Elements of Rhetoric." This course, first offered last spring, marked the first oratory course to be taught at Harvard since the 1968 retirement of Professor Frederick Clifton Packard, under whom the young John F. Kennedy '41 learned the art of elocution.

But there is evidence to show that some are unhappy with the current state of oratory on campus. Surveys by the Derek C. Bok Institute taken over the past 12 years indicate that the course alumni wish they had taken most while at Harvard was a course in public speaking.

Poor Speech

With only Engell's rhetoric course on campus, some professors and students worry that Harvard is not giving its students the preparation they need for the world outside the ivory tower.