Word: conways
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...farewell speech to his House's upperclassmen and Faculty members, John J. Conway, Master of Leverett House, last night described what he believes to be Harvard's special and distinguishing characteristic: an ethos that combines "aristocratic freedom" and "democratic opportunity." There are bad aspects as well as good to this ethos, Conway pointed out--and during his speech he spelled out the most important of its weaknesses--but in it, he said, is the mainspring of the College...
...sense in which Conway intended "freedom"--the sense in which it is "the essence of the aristocratic idea"--is the ability "to be yourself." In terms of the undergraduate, this is "the freedom to relate, without restraint, inhibition, or reference to any standard other than excellence and taste, to whatever branch of knowledge will best educate...
Inseparable from this freedom, Conway said, is "the striving after excellence." At Harvard, a place "impressed by all outstanding achievement," the striving after excellence is "the final liberating element," for in the College "anti-intellectualism cannot be found; no one need fear to express an idea, and no one need conceal the fact that he has brains...
Complementing the aristocratic synthesis of freedom and excellence, in Conway's analysis, is a "democracy that is deep in Harvard's nature." He saw this democracy in "the methods and beliefs by which the College selects its natural aristocracy"--the elitism Harvard fosters is "without reference to background on-to race or to religion or to what part of the country you come from." Harvard, he pointed out, has successfully resisted the temptation to restrict itself to any one class or group and instead has made itself representative of every group in the American world...
...Master Conway awarded the prizes around a table cluttered with sherry glasses and a piece of modernistic sculpture (some film canisters in a glass-sided box--it did not win). Art and sculpture took 90 per cent of the prizes, despite the fact that more than one-third of the entries were photographs...