Eleanor Roosevelt To Get 1st Female Honorary Degree

Elcanor Roosevelt will probably receive an honorary degree at Commencement on June 17, and become the first woman to be so honored in the history of the University.

The wife of the late President Franklin D. Roosevelt '04 will be in Cambridge throughout Commencement Week for the Fiftieth Reunion of her husband's class. A suite of rooms has been reserved for her at Dunster House, the official reunion headquarters of the class.

The precedent-shattering award, it is reported, will be given Mrs. Roosevelt both in commemoration of her husband's Rounion and in recognition of her own activities. As the first woman delegate to the United Nations and the author of 11 books, she has consistently been voted the outstanding living American woman. Until this year the Corporation has refused to give a Harvard degree to a female, although the names of Mrs. Roosevelt, Madame Pandit Nehru, and Helen Keller have been suggested to it in the past.

It is not yet known whether Mrs. Roosevelt will be one of the three degree recipients to speak at the annual meeting of the Alumni Association on the afternoon of Commencement.