Conway Gives Levertt Farewell Talk

In a farewell speech to his House's upperclassmen and Faculty members, John J. Conway, Master of Leverett House, last night described what he believes to be Harvard's special and distinguishing characteristic: an ethos that combines "aristocratic freedom" and "democratic opportunity." There are bad aspects as well as good to this ethos, Conway pointed out--and during his speech he spelled out the most important of its weaknesses--but in it, he said, is the mainspring of the College.

The sense in which Conway intended "freedom"--the sense in which it is "the essence of the aristocratic idea"--is the ability "to be yourself." In terms of the undergraduate, this is "the freedom to relate, without restraint, inhibition, or reference to any standard other than excellence and taste, to whatever branch of knowledge will best educate him."

Inseparable from this freedom, Conway said, is "the striving after excellence." At Harvard, a place "impressed by all outstanding achievement," the striving after excellence is "the final liberating element," for in the College "anti-intellectualism cannot be found; no one need fear to express an idea, and no one need conceal the fact that he has brains."

Complementing the aristocratic synthesis of freedom and excellence, in Conway's analysis, is a "democracy that is deep in Harvard's nature." He saw this democracy in "the methods and beliefs by which the College selects its natural aristocracy"--the elitism Harvard fosters is "without reference to background on-to race or to religion or to what part of the country you come from." Harvard, he pointed out, has successfully resisted the temptation to restrict itself to any one class or group and instead has made itself representative of every group in the American world."

Conway said that in Harvard's "reconcilement" of aristocracy and democracy was "the best expression of the noblest side of the American dream." He said the synthesis of the two is "related to all of the country and essential for an understanding of it."

But, Conway warned, there are also dangers implicit in the College's world. He described Harvard as a place that he wished "were less competitive and much less tense." He quoted Thomas Aquinas' teaching that the end of action is contemplation. He said that the University has not completely escaped "the impingement of commercial and industrial values on what should be a contemplative life essentially critical of secular values."

"The problem of Harvard today," he said, "is the conflict between the Puritan ethic--work as an end rather than a means--and the older idea that a philosophic principle of leisure is essential to true creativity. The failure to appreciate this is the reason we are all too busy around here. Empty space must be filled with often purposeless activity. We do not understand correctly what we are doing or why we are doing it, and this brings about much of the tension often bordering on neurosis that so often afflicts us and affects the quality of our work."

Another danger in Harvard's world--and one which Conway traced directly to the freedom he described--is that of "paralysis of the will, of a growing and hardening reluctance to commit oneself." "If the danger of a rigid orthodoxy is a completely closed mind," he asserted, "the danger of our particular kind of liberty is a compete open-mindedness." He said that "the kind of aristocrat Harvard produces has the duty to make his commitment." In the end, he said, "only that will justify our elitism. This wonderful Harvard world becomes a coterie to the extent that its graduates fail to serve; and there can be no service without commitment.