Athenaeum to Stage Debate On Role of the Intellectual

Over 50 students met last night in Sever Hall to lay the foundations of the University Athenaeum, a Harvard counterpart to the Oxford Union. After discussing the "premier meeting" Sunday night, the group broke up into Conservative and Liberal caucuses to map plans for the floor debate over the question "Have the Intellectuals Sold Out America?"

The conservatives will support and the liberals attack the resolution: "that intellectuals have not and are not now opposing Communism as ardently as other forms of totalitarianism, and thereby encouraged a double standard of morality." The meeting will be in Burr Hall B.

Peter Viereck '37, Pulitzer prize winning poet and author of the controversial "Shame and Glory of the Intellectuals" will speak for the motion. Other main speakers will include Hugh J. Schwartzburg '53, a first prize winner in this year's Boylston Prize Speaking Contest; William A. Rusher, chairman of the Board of Governors of the New York State Young Republican Club; and Peter Self 2G, former member of the Oxford Union.

William Y. Elliott, Williams Professor of Government, will also address the group Sunday on the general purposes of the Athenaeum. Elliott participated in the Oxford Union while there as a Rhodes Scholar, and tried many years ago to organize such a group at the University.

The liberal caucus will be led at the meeting by Frank I. Goodman '54. William W. Cancelmo '54 will head the conservative wing.

Only one Athenaeum member, Robert Langston '53, remained an independent by not affiliating with either caucus.

Present plans call for main speakers at Sunday's meeting to wear formal dress, in the Oxford tradition.