Summer speakers examine 20th-century life

The president of the University of Chicago and the author of the Sullivan Principles were among the visitors to campus during summer term, a term whose theme was "Issues and Ideas That Have Shaped 20th-century Life."

Hannah Gray, president of the University of Chicago, delivered the final lecture in the year-long Women in Public Service lecture series sponsored by the Rockefeller Center. In her talk, "Pressures and Priorities in the Educational Forecast," she stated that the pessimism associated with the future of higher education in America is "shortsighted and exaggerated" and that universities must always be willing to "venture into the unknown, to come to terms with ambiguity and complexity."

Gray is the first woman president of one of the nation's top universities. She was awarded the Medal of Liberty in July, has served as provost and acting president of Yale University, and is a member of the Pulitzer Prize Board.

The Montgomery Endowment, established by Kenneth F. Montgomery '25 and his wife, Harle, brought two speakers to Dartmouth this summer. Novelist Toni Morrison was in residence in July. In additional to a public reading from her works, she met with student and faculty groups. She is the author of four novels: Tar Baby, following which she was on the cover of Newsweek; Song of Solomon, which won the National Book Critics' Club Selection; TheBluest Eye; Sula; and the upcoming Beloved.

Morrison was a Montgomery Fellow in 1982 and was awarded an honorary docorate from Dartmouth in 1983. She is a senior editor at Random House.

Mexican author-statesman Carlos Fuente returned for his second visit as a Montgomery Fellow in August. An outspoken critic of U.S. policy in Latin America, Fuentes delivered a public lecture entitled "Sharing a Continent: The United States and Latin America." Fuentes spoke to classes and student groups and addressed a faculty seminar on U.S./Latin American relations.

The son of a Mexican diplomat, Fuentes served as ambassador to France in the midseventies. He is the founder of several Mexican literary magazines and the author of the highly-acclaimed novels The Death of Artemio Cruz and Terra Nostra and the play Orchids in the Moonlight. Other summer speakers included the major French filmmaker Marcus Ophuls, whose films have documented the horrors of the Nazi era. He participated in a panel discussion, "History, Social Responsibility, and Film," and was the guest of honor at a film tribute by the Dartmouth Film Society which included excerpts from such major works as The Sorrow and the Pity.

Biologist, physician, and author Lewis Thomas was the summer convocation speaker. His address, "Late Afternoon Thoughts on the 20th Century," is rerinted in the September issue of the Dartmouth Alumni Magazine.

The Reverend Leon Sullivan, author of the Sullivan Principles for American companies doing business in South Africa, spoke at the August graduation banquet for the Amos Tuck School's Minority Business Executive Seminar. The subject of Sullivan's speech was the importance of American minority-owned business, but he ended it by passionately stating his position on South Africa. Sullivan explained that the South African government would fall if all companies scrupulously followed the Sullivan Principles and practiced civil disobedience. He conceded that as many as 60 percent of the signatories "are foot-draggers riding on my coattails. " He defended the guidelines as a force for change, pointing out that the Sullivan Principles "caused a revolution in industrial race-relations that is irreversible." Sullivan, along-time advocate of sanctions against South Africa, warned that time is running out. "Every force must be brought to bear on South Africa before the dam bursts and there is a blood bath." Sullivan also reminded his audience that his principles are not open-ended. If South Africa does not abolish legislated apartheid by May 31, 1987, Sullivan stated, "I will call on all U.S. companies to leave, and I will ask for a total American embargo against South Africa, no matter what the president or Congress says."

Days after he surfaced from his undersea exploration of the Titanic, researcher Robert Ballard recapped the highlights of the expedition to a capacity crowd in Cook Auditorium in August. Ballard, director of the Deep Sea Submergence Laboratory at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts, enthralled his audience with a sneak preview of slides and videotapes taken by high-speed cameras mounted on Alvin, a manned submersible craft, and J.J., a smaller remote-controlled probe. The impetus behind Ballard's expedition was testing new underwater technology. His success with the Titanic dramatized the concept of building a vehicle that moves the mind and "leaves kidneys and gall bladders behind."

At a press conference, Ballard explained that scientific ramifications of his work extend beyond the discovery of the Titanic. Two years ago President Reagan declared the 200 miles of ocean surrounding U.S. territory and possessions "Exclusive Economic Zones," thus doubling our underwater territories. Ideally Ballard would like to spend years exploring these new territories.

Now that he has located and explored the Titanic, Ballard wants the ship left alone. "There is no reason to violate it or desecrate it," he said. Ballard claims the ship has no historic or archeological value because original sketches, photographs, and manifests still exist. "What is the sense of digging up what you know is there?" he asked. Ballard charged salvage operators interested in gathering Titanic relics with having "morbid, bad taste. 1 don't see any significance of owning a chamber pot of the Titanic. To see it on the block at Veiman-Marcus would be disgusting."(ln a lighter moment Ballard confessed he unsuccessfully attempted opening a ship's safe with the sub's mechanical arm.)

Ballard's presentation was sponsored by the Policy Studies Program and The Review.

Author-statesman Carlos Fuentes

Author Toni Morrison

The Reverend Leon Sullivan