Commencement Speaker

Commencement speakers at Dartmouth over the past ten years have included a lawyer, a French statesman, a Geneva disarmament delegate, a black minister, two Canadian government officials, a Secretary of the Interior, a Chairman of the Civil Service Commission, a United States Senator, and the Governor of New York. National and international issues have dominated their remarks.

This year for its Commencement speaker Dartmouth will turn to a Professor of the Classics, William Arrowsmith from the University of Texas. Described as one who has devoted his life to making classical thought meaningful to modern man, Professor Arrowsmith has strived in his teaching and writing to show that words and thoughts from brilliant minds and feeling hearts in man's past are lastingly relevant. He has specialized in lively translations of the Greek tragedies, most notably the works of Aristophanes and Euripides.

An outspoken critic of what he calls a senseless adherence to outmoded forms of traditional education - lifeless teachers, dull books, picayune periodicals, and stultifying graduate curricula, Professor Arrowsmith joined the University of Texas faculty in 1958. He had earlier held teaching posts at Princeton, Wesleyan University, and the University of California at Riverside. In 1965 he was named a University Professor in Arts and Letters at Texas and in the same year served as chairman of the Department of Classics.

He received his A.B. and Ph.D. degrees from Princeton and B.A. and M.A. degrees from Oxford. In addition he has been awarded three honorary degrees in the past two years. He is a member of Phi Beta Kappa and has been a Woodrow Wilson Fellow, Guggenheim Fellow, Rhodes Scholar, and the recipient of at least three awards for excellence in teaching and criticism.

Before presenting his Commencement address, Professor Arrowsmith will receive an honorary Doctorate of Letters from President Kemeny.