Endowed Professorships

"The epitome of successful communication is the product of a good man speakingwell."— QUINTILLIAN

For Herbert L. James, the Israel Evans Professor of Oratory and Belles Lettres, a philosophy of both life and teaching is contained in that observation by the great First Century Roman rhetorician, author, and tutor of Pliny the Younger and Tacitus.

"Speaking well implies rational thought expressed in a clear, arresting manner and is the audible mark of a competent and civilized mind," explains Professor James as he thinks about the field to which he has literally devoted his life. "It also implies what Quintillian called 'a goodman' because it is only the message of the 'good man' that withstands the test of time."

Historical testimony comes easy for Professor James, who himself holds the College's third oldest endowed professorship. The Israel Evans "chair" was established under the will of an 18th Century Concord, N.H., minister and an early Trustee of the College whose stewardship spanned 15 years at the turn of the century and who died in 1807. The chair, which has been held in history by such distinguished rhetoricians as David Peabody, Samuel Oilman Brown, Edwin David Sanborn, Craven Laycock, and James A. Winans, was established in 1847.

With this background, it is not surprising that Professor James, who regards his field of speech as one of the oldest and most fundamental of the liberating arts, is convinced that the young person studying speech is learning not only competence in handling the spoken word but also the importance of morality and intellectual substance in significant human communication.

These are just some of the qualities Professor James has tried to impart to the hundreds of Dartmouth undergraduates whom he has taught speech or coached in debate for one year short of a quarter century.

A native of the Kansas plains, Professor James arrived in Hanover in 1949 with an appointment as Instructor in Speech, although he had only just turned 23 years of age and the ink was scarcely dry on his baccalaureate from the University of Wichita.

The young Kansan had earned a reputation as an undergraduate debater that had brought him to the attention of Carl D. England, then Speech Department chairman at Dartmouth and a former member of the Wichita faculty, who was looking for an instructor who could also assist Speech Professor John Neal in coaching debate.

Professor England, now retired to Nantucket and an honorary member of the Class of 1946, interviewing James on the latter's 23rd birthday, sensed in him the potential he sought. The young man's cause was helped by the fact that he had already had some teaching experience. He also had completed his military duty, serving in an armored cavalry unit for a year during the occupation of Japan.

Although, at first, it had been expected that James would only assist in coaching debate, signals were changed when Professor Neal , who had been coach for 15 years, decided after a long conference with the new instructor "to take a gamble" and let him assume the entire responsibility.

It was quite a challenge, Professor James remembers, that was intensified when he met his first students and debaters and found many were older than he was. Many undergraduates then had spent as much as four years in the service.

But Professor James quickly made his mark, particularly in debating, where his teams have over the past 24 years achieved an unparalleled record in national tournament competitions, the "superbowl" for testing excellence in that art form.

Each year nearly 250 collegiate teams aspire to the 62 invitations to the nationals awarded on the basis of team records during the match season. In the face of this kind of competition, Professor James' teams have qualified for the national tournament 20 times in his 22 years of active coaching, reached the elimination round in three-quarters of those tournaments, and have compiled an overall record of match wins in the complex hierarchy of national championships that places Dartmouth among the top five teams in debating annals.

In the process, his teams have won the national title three times - in 1960, 1963 and 1967 - a record eclipsed only this year by Northwestern. Professor James remains, however, the only debate coach to have had three championship teams. Northwestern, for instance, achieved its new record of four wins under three different coaches.

If Professor James has made his mark on debate at Dartmouth, it has been a reciprocal experience.

"From the start," he said, again recalling the early years and all that followed, "I have been keenly aware that the quality of students at Dartmouth has been superior, and that fact has literally marked my life. The students consistently add the critical ingredient. They provided the talent and dedication; the coach is only the catalyst."

Except for the months spent at Ohio State University, where he earned his M.A. degree, and two years of additional graduate studies at the University of Florida, Professor James has taught and coached at Dartmouth. This has been an all-consuming assignment since to sustain a ranking debate program calls for expenditures of time and effort by both students and coach exceeding normal academic requirements. Virtually every weekend during the debating season, which begins in late September and ends in late April, he is off with some group of debaters at one tournament or another. And once a year, he hosts at Dartmouth an invitational tournament which has become one of the most coveted on the circuit outside of the nationals.

The schedule even obtains when he is on sabbatical, as he is this spring term, so that he finds himself trying to find time between debates and counseling his debaters to complete his part of a textbook which he is co-authoring and which has grown out of his debating experience.

Indeed, in an effort to make his copy deadline, he leaves this month (May) for Alabama to work on the book without interruption with the other co-authors — Prof. Annabelle Hagood of the University of Alabama and Dr. William Reynolds of George Washington University.

In the book, they are attempting to define a systematic approach to discovering, as debaters have to do, the critical issues in any situation, concept or policy question in conflict, and then to develop what he calls a "logical defense" of those critical issues in order to achieve resolution or decision-

Teaching, coaching debate, and thinking about its implication have had an important reward for Professor James in that he's enjoyed close relationships with his debaters during the years following graduation.

He's also enjoyed the knowledge, confirmed in a survey undertaken a few years ago, that most of his former debaters have gone on to success in law, government, and teaching. He is further proud that, in appreciation of this human record, Sigurd S. Larmon ' 14, retired chairman of the board of Young & Rubicam and former Dartmouth Trustee, has been through the years a generous supporter of Professor James and debate at Dartmouth in order that each generation of Dartmouth men may have the opportunity to sharpen their minds in that demanding arena.

In this context, Mr. Larmon once wrote, "Debating develops the muscles of the mind, increases the power to think and the power to express those thoughts clearly and convincingly." Citing the increasing role of oral communication as a result of television and live satellite transmission, he added that "the power to think, the power to be articulate may well become the power to save the world ... or destroy it. That is why our fervent hope is that incentives may be developed to make debating a major activity in every institution. One that is honored in the true proportion of its value."

HERBERT L. JAMES Israel Evans Professor of Oratory & Belles Lettres