Riesman Will Be First Ford Professor in '58

David Riesman '31 will become the University's first Ford Professor a year from next fall. Riesman will have a free hand in determining what courses he will teach, with no departmental restriction other than his official classification as professor of Social Sciences.

The purpose of the Ford Professorship is to provide for the appointment of distinguished men from different fields of knowledge to enrich the academic life in the College.

Riesman will be concerned exclusively with College level activity and teaching, and will thus be a sort of College University Professor.

Last night, Riesman told the CRIMSON that he had tentatively planned to give a course in "the sociology of psychotherapy" and possibly another on "American character and culture." He hopes that eventually he will be able to, if not teach a specific course in education, at least interest students in "campus culture."

Although he will have no formal departmental ties, Riesman said that he would, by the nature of his own academic interests, have some relationship with the Department of Social Relations.

When he spoke at graduation last June, Riesman startled a large audience of graduates and seniors by saying that the college student of today is more confident but less ambitious than his counterpart of 25 years ago.

"It was not the Depression only that made students of the Class of 1931 feel uncertain about the future: it was ambition also," he said last June. The present generation is in more of a hurry than its forerunners, not from ambition, but because they "have already made up their minds as to where they want to go on the superhighway of their chosen corporation or profession," he stated.

Riesman, a lawyer-turned-sociologist, is presently at the University of Chicago and is author of "The Lonely Crowd"' and "Faces in the Crowd,"

As an undergraduate, Riesman was an editor of the CRIMSON and in this capacity was one of the founders of the "Confidential Guide." He also campaigned, in the CRIMSON'S columns, for the reestablishment of athletic contests with Princeton.