ADDRESS TO FRESHMEN IN HARVARD COLLEGE James B. Conant President Harvard University (1933 – 1953) It is my privilege as president of the university to welcome you to Harvard: I welcome you most cordially, both personally and on behalf of the faculty and the student body. We are glad you have come to us and we hope you will find this college a place where you may spend four satisfactory years. These will be years of self-development-self-development along intellectual lines and as human beings. They will be full of excitement and, I hope, of enjoyment. I am sure that most of us who have been in your place wish we might have once again the unique experience of entering college. Harvard has much to offer you: the intellectual resources of an ancient college now part of a large university, the opportunity to study in many fields, the privilege of living in a community of fellow students and, above all, a great tradition of freedom -- freedom coupled with a sense of earnest responsibility. The very fact of your coming to us indicates that you share our faith in the importance of knowledge, our belief in the significance of man’s power of understanding. You clearly think it worth while to continue this process of education four years longer. You do not expect to obtain here a professional training—that is a matter for the graduate school—but something else, an experience which will equip you better to live a rich life in this highly complicated modern world. And this experience is much more than the acquiring of specific knowledge, necessary and valuable as that may be. To my mind, one of the most important aspects of a college education is that it provides a vigorous stimulus to independent thinking. The tremendous range of human knowledge covered by the curriculum, the diverse opinions expressed by the professors, the interminable arguments with your friends-all these contribute to feed the intellectual curiosity of all but the most complacent student. A desire to know more about the different sides of a question, [and] a craving to understand something of the opinions of other peoples and other times make the educated man. Education should not put the mind in a strait-jacket of conventional formulas but should provide it with the nourishment on which it may unceasingly expand and grow. Think for yourselves! Absorb knowledge wherever possible and listen to the opinions of those more experienced than yourself, but don’t let anyone do your thinking for you. Bernard Shaw in “Fanny’s First Play”, which you may recall is a play within a play, in the final scene, places a number of dramatic critics on the stage to discuss the play, by an anonymous author, which had just been performed. The first critic whose opinion was asked complained: “You don’t expect me to know what to say about a play when I don’t know who the author is, do you?... If it’s by a good author, it’s a good play, naturally. That stands to reason.” With this point of view we can all sympathize at times. This sort of intellectual crime we all commit in our lazy moods. We tend to form our judgments on the basis of labels. These labels may be the fashion of the moment, the verdict of the multitude or the cherished opinion of a little group that “really knows.” It does not matter what the source, if you accept labels at their face value you have abdicated your function as an individual. In art, in literature, in all matters where judgments of value are concerned, an education, particularly a college education, should provide the background from which each person can develop his own standards and ideas. When we turn to politics and the economic problems which face the world-and who doesn’t turn to them today?-the same considerations clearly hold. Somehow or other, out of the complexities of the past and present, each person has to shape his own philosophy as best he can. If you are willing to borrow somebody else’s you are not of the stuff that makes a free and vigorous nation. It is admittedly difficult-swimming against the stream of ready-made opinions and the masses of propaganda which descend from all sides-but this is one of the hard tasks of your generation. Even during your college career you will find groups of propagandists ready to use you for their own purposes; you will find them to right and to left. I heard the other day a story of a student who was discussing with an older man a proposed demonstration of some sort or other. “I admit it doesn’t make much sense,” he said, “but that is what they tell us we should do.” The value of joining any group of enthusiasts who presume to dictate what one should do is extremely dubious. Have the courage of your convictions but be sure they are your own convictions arrived at patiently by hard thinking. There are plenty of people who are willing and anxious to shout, to march and to wave flags and banners. I do not feel that this type needs reinforcement from the student body. What we do need are citizens who will examine seriously and discuss vigorously the many difficult problems with which the times present us. On all sides we hear it said that what the world needs is leaders; it does, as always, of the right sort. But it needs above all an independent group of hard-headed, clear-thinking people who face the future courageously without taking refuge behind worn-out formulas and who can tell a statesman from a demagogue (分辨政治家與政客). The world does not need more followers, it has too many already. Don’t acquire the habit young! The university and all the other institutions of higher learning in this country are the result of a long, slow growth. Like individuals they have a lineage and have inherited many traits and accepted many traditions from their ancestors. Harvard is descended from Paris through Oxford and Cambridge. Colleges are not machines for training youth, hurriedly constructed according to blueprint designs. They represent rather the accumulation of the wisdom of generations of devoted teachers and learned scholars. They have been made possible by the efforts of those who loved learning and believed in its value for civilization. Laboratories, museums, libraries are at the command of the college youth today to assist him in his work-incalculable riches from the standpoint of even fifty years ago. All this is supplied by institutions in this country, privately endowed or publicly supported, because those who have preceded us were convinced that a steady stream of highly educated young men was essential for the welfare of the country. Will the events of the next fifty years justify this expectation? Gentlemen, you and the others of your age who are entering the colleges and universities of this country are a selected group, in a sense a privileged group on whom heavy responsibilities will shortly fall. Only about one of twelve of the young men and women of this country receives a college education; some are not interested, some are incapable of benefiting, but many who could profit from it are for one reason or another deprived of the opportunity. Whether a smaller or a larger number should pass through our colleges is a large question and one I shall not touch on tonight but pass on to you as an educational problem worthy of many a night’s argument with your roommate. At all events, if civilization is to continue to prosper in these United States, in your hands and those of your contemporaries in other colleges lies the future. --

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