Cox Is Best Bet to Walk Off With Honorary Harvard Degree

Archibald Cox '34, Williston Professor of Law, is back in town from England this week, working in a special office at the Law School.

Cox was unavailable for comment yesterday, but what he may be working on in that office is a speech, to be delivered at the annual meeting of the Associated Harvard Alumni on Thursday.

John Hope Franklin

That is significant because the speaker at the AHA meeting is invariably awarded an honorary degree at Commencement earlier in the day.

Gossip about the honorary degree holders--their names are kept strictly secret until they take the stage at Commencement--abounds at Harvard this time of year, and this year Cox is a top name on busy tongues.

Tennessee Williams

Cox has, as they say in the alumni office, served Harvard loyally--and since last October he has been a national figure as well.

Another possibility is the Soviet novelist Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn. Solzhenitsyn was on the Board of Overseers' list of honorary degree recipients last year but could not get to the United States to accept it. However, the novelist is now in the United States, on a research fellowship at Stanford.

Diana Trilling

Otherwise, the degrees will probably go to the standard cast of characters--a