Brown University - Liber Brunensis Yearbook (Providence, RI)

Page 8 text:

L.B.J. was received in exchange for a bicentennial commemorative stamp. This exchange was given what appeared to be highly partisan support in a highly guarded and more highly packed Meehan Auditorium. Newsweek quoted one Brown student as saying, He talked down to us. Most of the campus did not feel this way, however. They took the simplicity of his speech for clear- ness and the brevity of it for preciseness. The content they took close to their hearts - especially those in the humanities - for they were promised their own national foundation. Education was what President Johnson had come to talk about, and this is exactly what he did. He described the federal com- mitment to education, its development and its planned expansion, how much it mat- tered, and how much he cared about it all. It was good to hear, and all hoped it was meant and would be accomplished.

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TOUGALOO COLLEGE is an experiment in progress - by any interpretation. The Brown-Tougaloo program is underway; and the attempt is wholeheartedly being made to advance Negro education. But there is more to the Brown-Tougaloo program than this. Brown is gaining from the exchange by giving of itself, through its experience, resources, faculty notably sociology professor Harold Pfautz and through its students. Experience in education is given; experience in human relations is returned. Aid is being provided to improve the calibre of the education and the library facilities, and Brown is directly presented with the raw materials for solving a pressing social problem. Faculty are giving their time, and are being given an educational challenge. And students, without whose support the whole program would be meaningless, are planning to con- duct a pre-freshman tutorial program this summer where they will experience first-hand the difficulties connected with integration a legally, but not morally resolved problem. The mutual exchange between Brown and Tougaloo must accomplish other things. At the only predominately Negro college in Mississippi where there is more than token academic freedom, the turnover of faculty is appallingly great. Money will help correct the problem, but progress is still slow. Since 70 of Tougaloo's graduates go on to teaching, the need for an improved and permanent faculty is even greater, for the poorly taught can themselves be only poor teachers. Brown can perhaps be of most use in dealing with the attitude of the students. They are scholarly naive. They are willing to learn but often only in practical situations: they like political science but not history. Though only established in September, the Social Science Institute has made a start in changing this student attitude. It has stimulated and encouraged study to improve academic work. Planned tele-lectures from Stephens College are another attempt to improve Tougaloo's intellectual environment, to provoke the search for knowledge for its own sake. Tougaloo is a beginning and a very necessary one. It is perhaps the most important way in which Brown can improve its own environment, for by helping Tougaloo gain higher academic standing, students at Brown will gain a greater understanding of their own university.

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SYMPOSIA are usually esoteric meetings of unknown scholars who have their dry discussions perpetuated by publication in an obscure book or journal. But when a university enters its 201st year, symposia become spe- cial, and surprisingly interesting. Brown held three such meetings or one symposium with three ses- sions, as the program had it. Future Directions of the University was the first topic. A panel of university presidents, moderated by the President Emeritus of Brown, Henry M. Wriston, considered problems facing today's universities and col- leges: the tremendous growth of knowledge in recent years, the superficialities of a liberal education, and the resulting problems connected with too narrow a spe- cialization. Robert W. Morse, former Dean of the Col- lege, was chairman of the second symposium. He, v.f along with noted scientists in physics, mathematics, and the life sciences, discussed the increasing difficulty which teachers of science face - noting that with the ever increasing amount of scientific knowledge to be learned, there are problems with both a general and a specific method of instruction. The final symposium saw a discussion of the humanities. Noted Brown language professor Juan Lopez-Morillas chaired this panel, whose topic was the Future Directions of the Humane Studies and which was again concerned with the knowledge explosion. President Keeney concluded this session: Knowledge is a very difficult worm to hold on to; and when some one chops part of it off, the rest goes running away'' a comment aptly uniting the themes of Brown's bicentennial symposia.