Rhodes Scholarships

The Harvard Fellowships Committee acted admirably in bypassing the sex requirement for eligibility in endorsing three Radcliffe seniors for the Rhodes scholarship. As the Committee pointed out, they were at least as qualified as the men in every other category stipulated by the scholarship's founder in 1902.

Eventual success in removing the sex restriction depends on how many women apply and are endorsed by their schools, and on whether the American secretary of the Rhodes committee, William Barber, changes his previously timid stand on the issue.

Mr. Barber was the person who took it upon himself to disqualify Eileen Lash, the woman who last year first received a college endorsement, from competition for the scholarship even before the state committee had a chance to review her application. His justification for that action--that American institutions, as beneficiaries of the trust fund, have no right to challenge the requirements set by the founder--is a poor substitution of manners for morals.

When Cecil Rhodes set forth the scholarship's stipulations in his will, he clearly stated that no candidate should be discriminated against on the basis of race or religion. Had Mr. Rhodes lived today, it is likely that he would have included sex in that listing. The qualities he elaborated as exhibiting "manhood" included courage, honor and concern for one's fellow man--terms that make it clear Mr. Rhodes was speaking of manhood in its generic and not in its genetic sense.

The U.S. Office of Civil Rights has expressed a willingness to encourage the British Trustees to alter the scholarship's terms. But only if enough women apply for the Rhodes, and are endorsed by their colleges, can the Office pursue their case. Other universities should follow Harvard's example and endorse women on the same basis as men. And Mr. Barber should refrain from efforts to squash the women's applications before they reach the state committees. Only when its sexual bias has been removed will the Rhodes scholarship be able to embody the ideals on which it was founded.