Harry Truman Won't Get Degree at Commencement For 20th Straight Year Since Becoming President

This year as always, sure as sun at commencement and the painters who come with exams, Harvard will fall to confer an honorary degree on former President Harry S Truman.

This oversight is still officially secret. The Corporation treasures up its bright designs until graduation morning. The first clues anyone gets usually the loudspeakered calls for the University Marshal to meet eminent guests at the gate next to Massachusetts Hall.

The logic and precedent favor the prediction. Truman did not receive an honorary degree from Harvard last year. Nor was he so honored by the university the year before. It's been the same story for two decades now.

In addition, rumor has it that Averill Harriman is getting a degree this year, and he falls pretty neatly into the statesman category. Which means he'll probably give the speech at the Alumni Association meeting in the afternoon. And Truman couldn't very well get a degree and not be speaker, So...

After Truman the guessing gets harder. Vice President Hubert H. Humphrey will probably miss out, since giving him a degree would be a slap President Johnson's face. Rumor has it President Johnson will not get a hood from Harvard.

Same goes for Sen. Edward M. Kennedy '64 (D-Mass.) --John got one after four years in the Senate--and his brother's face '48 (D.N.Y.)

If Rhodesian Prime Minister Ian Smith gets a degree there will be a riot, and that would bother the alumni, and the whole graduation show is designed to entertain the alumni anyway, so you can count him out.

Also likely not to turn up on the platform are: Saul Alinsky, Dick Gregory, Timothy Leary and Susan Sontag.

Those you shouldn't bet against are easier to pick. First on the list go all Supreme Court Justices not already honored. The Corporation likes Supreme Court Justices better than anything except presidents of the World Bank.

Ask for very good odds against all lady doctors and architects, especially from underdeveloped countries.

As a rule it is a bad idea to bet against bishops. Or cardinals. Especially if of an ecumenical bent. This year it would also be unwise to lay much money against Gardiner Day, who retires this year as rector of Christ Church.

Theodore H. White '38, a summa graduate and a member of the Committee to Visit Far Eastern Languages, is probably an institution by now; watch out.

Eminent retiring professors are always likely prospects, but every so often the Fellows throw a change up and pick someone who's still teaching. (Douglas Bush, retiring Gurney Professor of English Literature, got a Litt.D. in 1959, for example.) So they might just pull William Alfred out of the hat.