THE PRESIDENT GOMES TO TOWN

Clinton''s Commencementvisit recalls one ofEisenhower's best speeches.

It will be only the third time in history that a sitting President has come to Dartmouth to pick up an honorary degree. In March the White House announced that Bill Clinton will mount the Dartmouth platform Sunday, June 11, to receive a doctorate of laws.

The last occasion turned out to be even more historic than anyone had predicted. "Don't join the book burners," Dwight Eisenhower said in 1953. The press was quick to relate the President's remarks to Senator Joseph McCarthy's campaign to ban controversial books in the U.S. overseas information libraries. And shortly after, Eisenhower began an open attack on McCarthy.

Bill Clinton's speech will be the third in a series of commencements for the President, after Michigan State and the Air Force Academy. The White House staff says he plans to talk in all three speeches about "the opportunities a changing society offers to American families and workers."

Clinton appears to have seen Eisenhower's Dartmouth speech before he decided to come to Hanover. "I had a chance to talk with President Clinton about the historical aspects of past Presidents speaking at Dartmouth during a White House dinner meeting last fall," says Terry Shumaker '70, cochair of Clinton's 1992 New Hampshire campaign. "During that conversation, it was evident to me that the fact that Eisenhower had spoken at Dartmouth commencement four decades earlier and what he had said to the graduates made a strong impression on President Clinton."