Letters

Eisenhower Plaque ?

To THE EDITOR: I would like to see the following proposal put forward on the floor for discussion and adoption:

That all alumni of the College be invited to contribute to a special fund to be set up immediately for the purpose of placing a plaque which will commemorate the time and place at Dartmouth where President Eisenhower delivered his "don't join the book burners" speech.

I favor this action personally not alone because of the historical significance of the President's address, but also because it would place the alumni solidly in line with the faculty and the student body of the College in the serious business of defending intellectual freedom against its many enemies.

New York, N. Y.

Journalism Students

To THE EDITOR: As in my latter days of teaching at Dartmouth I am attempting to formulate the benefits or non-benefits of Journalism including writing and expression in all fields as a Curriculum Study, I would like to hear from my former students (since 1921) who are already engaged in some form of writing or editing.

Is Journalism a profession? Is it a career? Is it a preparation for something else, public service, advertising, business letter writing, or the like? The subject as taught has a different approach in practically every American col- lege. I am interested in the cultural or philosophic aspects rather than the practical, since the former approach helps to combat a fault which has always existed among news papermen, namely the landing in a rut.

When Mr. Pulitzer, the most practical of all newspapermen, decided to leave his money to a school of journalism, the question of preparation for the work had been a moot subject in cultural colleges. Cardinal Newman in his Observations on University Education, criticized adversely the practice of journalism, and Newman's chapter on Learning its OwnEnd was practically a Bible to us when I was a student. In the years that have passed, education itself has gone through a tremendous change, the classical aspect has almost entirely disappeared, and much more attention is being paid to projects and field work.

I am not interested in a criticism of my own course and teaching here at Dartmouth (the world is too full of brickbats for that) but I am interested in the study of society through the newspaper. When I first began I heard a criticism from an officer of another college that Dartmouth had a course in which all one had to do was to read the newspaper. I blushed of course, but was not discomfited.

Many of my former students have done extremely well in writing of different kinds. I don't believe I helped them much, but I do know that I didn't discourage them.... Maybe I should have done so. I'm sure I don't know.

. . . But in order to help determine the exact place of Journalism in the curriculum of a Liberal College I should like to have the ideas of those who worked with me and are now practicing in the field.... May I have those ideas?

Professor of Journalism

Hanover, N. H.