Two Professors Praise College For Oppenheimer Appointment

Two professors who have worked at Princeton's Institute for Advanced Study last night praised the appointment of the Institute's director, J. Robert Oppenheimer '25, as next year's William James Lecture.

Perry G. E. Miller, professor of American Literature and Visitor at the Princeton Institute in 1953-54, called the appointment "wonderful, just superb. I think the University is exceedingly fortunate in having Oppenheimer accept the invitation," he added in a telephone interview.

Last March, Miller refused to speak at the University of Washington after the president of the school barred a series of talks of Oppenheimer. At that time Miller called the ban on Oppenheimer's talks "an egregrious insult to a great scholar" and "a flagrant violation of the fundamental principles of intellectual integrity and liberty of spirit upon which the education of a free society is erected."

Another one-time scholar at the Institute for Advanced Study, Morton G. White, professor of Philosophy and chairman of the department of Philosophy, called Harvard's appointment of Oppenheimer "a testimony not only to his great distinction as a scientist, but also an expression of the scholarly world's appreciation of his breadth of interest, his cultivation, and his profound understanding of the situation in which man finds himself today."

First Joint Nomination

White announced that Oppenheimer will be the first William James Lecture to be nominated by the departments of Philosophy and Psychology acting jointly. He also said that Oppenheimer will probably live in Cambridge at least through April and May of 1957.

"I know that his lectures will be an exciting contribution to the intellectual life of the University," White said. "They will stimulate not only philosophers, psychologists, and physicists, but all who recognize our present need for deeper insight into the confused relation between the sciences and the humanities."