Conant Backs Secularism in First Chapel

President Conant defended Harvard's traditionally secular approach to education yesterday morning in an address during the chapel exercises in Memorial Church.

He said that the concept of tolerance was being challenged in the present period of anxiety and tension. "That we live today in an atmosphere of apprehension engendered by a highly dangerous international situation is only too evident. It is not at all surprising that dogmatists with reactionary views in politics, in education, and in religion receive a ready hearing that would not be accorded them in more tranquil times.

Some Call Education "Godless"

"Among the targets are the tax supported schools and faculties of education. Of those who believe that education must be closely tied to religious instruction, some few are using the present time to condemn all secular education as godless and immoral.

"Harvard was founded ... by a group of vigorous dissenters from the Church of England. Before a generation had passed there was dissent from the first dissent. By the turn of the eighteenth century the orthodoxy of Harvard was considered highly questionable ... by the time we celebrated our 300th anniversary it was widely accepted that a vast number of colleges and universities in America, whatever their denominational, origins, were ... secular institutions. How could it be otherwise in a nation where religious toleration was a necessary condition of survival?"