What of the Senior Fellows?
A Commentary on Members of the 1940-41 Group and a Description of Their Individual Projects This Year
THE SENIOR FELLOWSHIP idea is too elusive a thing for the academic yardstick. Ask a Senior Fellow what his "project" is, what he is really doing with his year of freedom, and he may offer no more than an evasive "Oh, reading a few books," followed by a somewhat apologetic grin. Nominally, his project may be anything from a study of ancient languages to a consideration of the business cycle. Actually, soon after he receives his key to the Paul Room and hangs his favorite pictures on the walls of his office, he realizes that his true project is to take the conventional training he has received and, unhampered by "institutional coercion," try to shape it into an educational program that will have meaning and validity for himself.
A Senior Fellow is a "guest of the college." He is not required to attend classes, take examinations, or pay tuition fees. Presumably, he has demonstrated, in his college record and his letter of application, that he has sufficient imagination and energy to make productive use of these privileges. This, and not achievement in classroom or on campus, is what the Presi- dent, Dean Bill and the fellowship committee have consistently sought since the adoption of the plan in 1929.
But a new freedom brings a new way of response. No longer required to produce immediate effects or get immediate results, a Senior Fellow finds himself turning upon the process of education and inquiring if it really is education. He begins to look at his own intellectual interests and the recorded thought of others as things worth critical investigation for their own sake. Such an opportunity may result largely in an alarming sense of his own limitations. It may also introduce him to an experience as different from curricular routine as the discovery of a great book is different from the correct quotation of title and author on an hour-exam. It may even lead him towards a degree of intellectual poise and honest thought. But of this much he can be reasonably sure: it will provide one of the most revealing and, in the broadest sense of the word, educating years he will ever spend.
One further notation should be made. At the root of the Senior Fellowship idea is the belief that education is properly a private affair, that it is most valuable when it best encourages individual search. By providing congenial conditions for working out this belief, the college has enabled five or seven students each year to seek the rewards of extended self-analysis and self-development. But the meaning of the Senior Fellow plan to the college as a whole is another matter, and an important one. To date, the Senior Fellow group as a group has not existed. Rather, it has been a coterie of individuals, each following his own interests in his own way, related to the undergraduate body only through the campus organizations and committees in which its separate and separated members take part. Could the Senior Fellows, without losing their personal aims, become, occasionally, a more stimulating force in the life of the college by acting as a unit with a common ideal and a common purpose? That is a question which all those interested in' Dartmouth education—administration, faculty, alumni, students—must try to answer.
Following is a brief statement of the work being done by Senior Fellows of the Class of 1941:
Charles G. Bolte, Greenwich, Conn. Boltd has been making a study of the formation of American Society based on a critical analysis of three main periods: the Colonial, the Revolutionary, and the "Golden Age" of 19th century literature. Tracing the growth of the New England mind from Puritanism onward, he has interested himself especially in the conflict of the Puritan strain of Jonathan Edwards with the incoming Yankee way of thought as typified in Franklin. Through readings in contemporary historians and journalists, he has examined the principles and motives of the actors in the revolutionary drama and the emergence of American political forms and social philosophy in the post-revolutionary period. He has followed in particular the conflicting views of Jefferson and Hamilton and the continuation of their diverging streams of thought throughout American history. His own sympathies with the Jeffersonian way suggested a more detailed study of Jackson and Lincoln. He is spending the remainder of the year on Emerson, Thoreau, Melville and Whitman as the spokesmen of America's greatest literary age.
Bolte has worked for the most part in original sources, avoiding as much as possible "riding on the tails of trends." His faculty adviser is Professor Sidney Cox of the English Department.
Peter M. Keir, Hanover, N. H. The problem of sub-standard housing—its extent, its causes, and the attempted and proposed methods of eliminating it—comprise Keir's topic. Avoiding the excessive claims of the reformer, Keir set out to determine just how widespread sub-standard housing really is. Following the discovery that is more prevalent than is generally realized, he began an investigation o£ the principal causes: the great expansion of the 1920'5, the toleration of jerry-built structures, the lamentable planlessness of much city-planning, the problem of financing. His study of causes led to an exploration of the building industry itself, particularly the high prices resulting from lack of organization and factionalism on the part of management and seasonal employment and outmoded craft rules on the part of labor. He will conclude his study with a consideration of the remedial plans of government and industry, especially recent federal housing acts and efforts to impress upon the public the high economic cost of slums.
Keir's sources have been pamphlets and papers issued by the various government bureaus and studies made by housing experts. He has been working under the guidance of Professor Hugh Morrison of the Art Department.
Edward F. Little, Marlboro, Mass. Little has been making a study of the Latin language as the vehicle of thought of European civilization. His reading has been largely in the texts of the great scholastic thinkers—such as Anselm, Abelard, and Hugh of St. Victor—that have played an important part in the shaping of European thought and history. He has undertaken this study with the conviction that Latin, the language which Rome, the Catholic Church, and the founders of science wrote and spoke and thought, is the main representative of the unity of our past history; that it is the common stream which has flowed through Western culture; that the panaceas for world problems which are put forth today are useless if they are not founded on an imaginative response to the imperative of the unity of our heritage. He regards his work as a first step towards understanding and revealing this imperative. His attention has been directed to "Medieval" Latin in particular because it is one of the most revelatory and untried fields of Latin study. Little's faculty adviser is Professor Rosenstock-Huessy of the Philosophy Department.
William A. Lowry, Kansas City, Mo. To provide himself with a broader understanding of the meaning .of America as a world force, and to prepare himself for public administration or politics, Lowry has been studying American philosophy and political letters. His interest is in the significance of America in world history of the past two hundred years rather than in its strictly national development. Beginning with wide reading in the creative writers and political spokesmen who best tell the story of American civilization, he has gone on to a consideration of America's world position at the present time and its probable role in the immediate future. Aware of the vastness of the field, Lowry has limited himself in the second semester to an exacting study of only one phase: the phenomenon of immigration from the close of the Napoleonic era to the World War, a subject on which he has collected considerable statistical and interpretive material.
As an active associate of the Experimental Work Camp at Tunbridge, Vermont, Lowry has received practical insight into the problem of working out a new resettlement idea.
He, also, is working with Professor Rosenstock-Huessy.
Richard B. McCornack, Chicago. McCornack is spending his year on a study of LatinAmerican relations since the World War. His main concern is to investigate the reasons for the changes in attitude between the United States and the South American governments, from the mutual antagonisms existing in 1918 to the "Good Neighbor" policy of recent years. His purpose is to equip himself for a sound appraisal of the current proposals for a permanent Association of the American Nations as outlined in the Colombian-Dominican treaty of 1938
McCornack began his work by familiarizing himself with the history of imperialisms in general from the Roman Empire to the formation of Great Britain. Following an examination of Bolivar as a typical Latin-American statesman, he made a detailed study of the various conceptions and applications of the Monroe Doctrine. He is now giving attention to the anti-American, or Pan-Hispanic, sentiment in South America which must be overcome before any lasting union of the Western Hemis phere nations is possible. He will devote the rest of the year largely to recent phases of the problem as reflected in Spanishand English-language periodicals and conference reports. Professor J. M. Arce of the Modern Language Department is his faculty adviser.
Lawrence E. Thompson, San Marino, Cat. Thompson has been continuing his economics studies with an analysis of the 1920's and 1930's as particular periods of economic history in the United States. Starting with the premise that the economic system is at the heart of every human culture, he is making a critical estimate of the capitalistic economy of the past twenty years in the belief that from a proper understanding of the basic maladjustments of that time it is possible to construct a more satisfactory working plan for government and industry. He has given special attention to the problem of capital formation, the lag of capital goods behind consumer goods, as a key to the erratic behavior of the business cycle. Towards the immediate future, he is considering the probable effects of the present war boom and what it will mean in increased government participation in and ownership of private industry.
Thompson's sources of information have largely been statistical studies of employment, production trends, price levels, and income distribution. His reading has been in interpretive books on cyclical theory published since the twenties.
He has been working with Professor J. M. McDaniel of the Economics department.
Theodore Wachs, Jr., Haddonfield, N. J. Wachs has been continuing his work with the Honors Group in English which, in the senior year, includes readings , in English Literature from 1700 to the present. As a special project, he is making a biographical study of various men who have figured prominently in the intellectual and artistic development of European civilization, men such as Dante, Leonardo da Vinci, Erasmus, Montaigne, Voltaire, and Goethe. His particular interest has been those who, for reasons he has been trying to determine, have been labelled the Great Humanists, inquiring into the value their thought and action may have in illuminating the problems of our own world as well as theirs. Largely through the original works of such men, and secondarily through what has been written about them, he hopes to make a start towards an understanding of the humanistic tradition. His approach has by way of biography, rather than history or philosophy or letters, in the belief that the focal point of such a study must be the individuals themselves rather than any academic patterns which claim them.
Wachs' principal faculty adviser is Processor Arthur M. Wilson of the Biography Department.
THREE SENIOR FELLOWS WHOSE WORK IS DESCRIBED IN THIS ISSUE Left to right: Lawrence E. Thompson '4l of San Marino, Cal; William A. Lowry '41 ofKansas City; and Edward F. Little '4l of Marlboro, Mass., who have held coveted SeniorFellowships this year.
HOLDERS OF SENIOR FELLOWSHIPS IN THEIR LIBRARY HEADQUARTERS The Paul Room in the Library, gift of Mrs. Helen L. Paul in memory of Carroll Paul '03,provides rooms and studies for Dartmouth Senior Fellows. Four of the group are shownabove, left to right: Peter M. Keir '41 of Hanover, Charles G. Bolte '41 of Greenwich,Conn., Theodore Wachs Jr. '41 of Haddonfield, N. J., and Richard B. McCornack '41of Chicago.
