SPECIAL LECTURES IN GOVERNMENT PLANNED

A unique experiment in the history of the instruction systems of American universities will be conducted by the Department of Government at Harvard University during the present academic year when a series of extra-curricular lectures will be presented by younger members of the department, dealing with their particular fields of research. The lectures, scheduled to begin in the latter part of November, are open only to members of the University and are in no way a required part of the regular Government department courses.

The experiment is viewed as consistent with the policy laid down last spring by President James B. Conant's administration of taking away the emphasis from formal, stiff course requirements, and of giving the student greater responsibility in the matters of attendance and records.

The lectures are voluntarily contributed by the instructors. They have expressed the opinion that from the point of view of the material involved the lectures will have a double value. First, they will make available to students research that would ordinarily not fit into any course structure and would therefore not ordinarily be at their disposal until the work had been put into book form. Secondly, the lectures will be valuable as a testing ground for the opinions and theories developed under the isolated conditions of private research.

The formality and location of the lectures has been left entirely up to the individual speaker. It is understood that some of the men contemplate lecturing in regular university halls, while others wish to hold less formal groups. possibly accompanied by discussion, in various units of the House Plan. Particular interest centers about this development in the technique of instructing college groups; for it is an interesting out-growth of the tutorial system.

The lecturers all bear the title of Instructor in Government and Tutor in the Division of History, Government, and Economics. The list of speakers and their subjects in the scheduled order of appearance, at dates in the winter yet to be determined, is as follows:

E. Pendleton Herring, instructor in Government: "Special Interests and the Federal Bureaucracy".

Wolgang H. Krans, tutor in Government: "The New German State."

Mario L. Einaudi, instructor in Government: "Fascism and the Corporative State".

Merle Fainsod, instructor in Government: "The Communist Internationale".

Payson S. Wild, Jr., instructor in Government: "Topics in the History of International Law".

Albert E. Hindmarsh, Assistant Dean of Harvard College and instructor in Government: "Japanese Foreign Policy".

Although the subjects listed are concerned primarily with modern governmental problems. It is emphasized that it is not the main purpose of the lectures to present a survey of contemporary movement. It is the fundamental theory of the series that projects of research carried on by younger members of the government department be outlined, informally, to other members of the University.

There are no indications that other departments of the University contemplate undertaking similar ventures. But it is expected that they will watch the progress of the Government Department's experiment closely