Commencement Speaker

WHITNEY NORTH SEYMOUR of New York, president-elect of the American Bar Association, will deliver the commencement address before the College's 191st graduating class on June 14. Mr. Seymour, the father of Dean Thaddeus Seymour, has specialized in constitutional law and in the anti-trust areas of corporate law. He was chosen to head the Bar Association last year and will take office this August.

In a recent New York Times profile lie was described as a "long-time fighter for the principle that lawyers have an obligation to defend unpopular clients. This led him to defend Angelo Herndon, a young Negro communist organizer whose 18-year sentence to a Georgia chain gang became a cause celebre for radical organizations in the mid-1930'5." Herndon had been convicted of violating an Alabama anti-insurrection law that dated from Reconstruction days. Mr. Seymour was hired by the International Labor Defense to argue the case before the Supreme Court, which ruled that the old law had been misapplied and that conviction was not possible on the evidence presented.

Born in Chicago, Mr. Seymour received his Bachelor's degree from the University of Wisconsin in 1920 and a law degree from Columbia three years later. He was admitted to the New York Bar in 1924 and joined the law firm of Simpson, Thatcher and Bartlett which made him a partner in 1929. He has taught at Yale Law School, New York University Law School, and Columbia University.

Mr. Seymour served as assistant solicitor general of the United States in 1931-33 and was a member of the nineman committee that studied the federal loyalty-security program in 1954.