Honor Where Due

An honorary degree according to ancient usage is one granted to a person whom the University wishes to honor, or whose incorporation in the University is deemed an honor to the institution. In modern times most such degrees represent mutual backscratching by college presidents and recognition of indirect if concrete contributions to learning by such men as J. P. Morgan '89, LL.D. '23. Recipients of honorary degrees are almost without exception only those no farther left than dead center and capable of unqualified approval by the Dies Committee and the D.A.R.

The colleges create the mental climate of the country--their choices of whom to honor should represent in a democratic nation simply those who have done most for learning and for democracy. Just as the Navy for the first time has started to have an occasional launching with a riveter's wife rather than a debutante cracking the bottle of champagne, Harvard this year should honor something more than financial generosity and conformity to tradition. The honorary degree is only a symbolism, but men live and die for symbols. Any Senior could draw up a list of men worthy of sitting on the Graduation platform this June: from Harvard alumni Roger Baldwin '05 of the Civil Liberties League, and Sumner Welles '13. From education, Charles Beard and Robert Morss Lovett, neither of whom has ever received such an award because they have insisted too strongly on what they felt was truth. From abroad John Maynard Keynes, Harold Laski, or Ernest Bevin, of whom with their brilliance, achievement, and human leadership would be far worthier than last year's choice of Tory Lord Halifax. From America young Walter Reuther, who has pointed a new path in labor-capital relations, or the more established leaders of labor such as David Dubinski and Sidney Hillman. Thomas Hart Benton, Grant Wood, Paul Robeson in the arts and Clifford Odets and H. L. Mencken in literature are other men for whom academic recognition is overdue.

Harvard has already been first to recognize the newest of the arts in the person of Walt Disney A.M. '38 and been first to award an honorary degree to a Negro. It would be only fitting that this war class should at their graduation for the first time in American academic history pay tribute to all elements in the democracy we are fighting to preserve.