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University Daily Kansan Monday, December 6, 1954
Danger Seen in Term,'Egg Head'
A growing climate of anti-intellectualism is moving into the United States, by way of the Fascist states of World War II, and is expressing itself with the term "egg head."
Some U.S. leaders are using the term as opposition to any and all moves toward intellectual diversity from popular opinions.
And the term works. The pro-conformist leaders within our society have found it an effective word, attaching it to any intellectual opposing their views. It usually is attached to liberals.
Sen. Clifford Case, recently-elected New Jersey Republican, found the world's connotations one of his toughest battles in the recent elections.
Sen. Case won, but he did not win because of his habit of using his brain; he won in spite of it. He won by soft-pedaling his thinking, only by reconciling at the last minute the pro-Eisenhower liberals with the reactionary segment of his own party. He won by backing up on his diversity of opinion. The voters of his party simply refused to recognize honest diversity as leadership.
Probably the most famous of the term's recipients is Adlai Stevenson, leading contender for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1956. Should Mr. Stevenson lose the nomination, chances are that it is because he is looked upon as an "egg head" by conservatives of his own party.
And every university graduate is a potential "egg head." An educational institution, as long as it continues to teach its students to think on political, economic or social matters, is handicapping these students.
students.
They will not be able to reach any but "egg head" status if the present anti-intellectual frost becomes the final chill which will put our democracy "on ice." —Ron Grandon
Einstein Challenges Trend
A statement that dramatizes an ugly symptom of the sickness of our time was made recently by Dr. Albert Einstein.
"If I would be a young man again," he wrote to the Reporter magazine, "... I would not try to become a scientist or scholar or teacher. I would rather choose to be a plumber or peddler in the hope to find that modest degree of independence still available under present circumstances."
sent circumstances.
We hope that Dr. Einstein doesn't mean what he says literally.
The statement is an extreme one. But perhaps the eminent scientist meant to jolt and shock us.
This sickness of our time is not merely the age-old misunderstanding and distrust of the "intellectual" nor these misunderstandings intensified by world confusions and fears. It is the result of these distrusts as they are played upon by the demagogue and exploited by the seeker after power.
Dr. Einstein is right if he is only trying to make a strong case for the fact that the scholars and teachers have been unfairly attacked and deserve defense.
CARE Gifts Proposed
If you're tired of a "commercialized" Christmas, we suggest the exchange of "inasmuch" gifts this year.
Through Food Crusade, CARE's 1954 Christmas project, a contribution of 50 cents to cover overseas distribution costs will put a 15-pound surplus-food package into the hands of needy persons. This bargain gift is made possible through the cooperation of the Foreign Operations Administration, with the food supplied out of the U.S. Department of Agriculture's overstuffed bins and warehouses.
Orders can be placed through a local postmaster, Railway Express office, or CARE office. You can choose from 32 countries to which the package may be sent.
Your friends will certainly be moved if your package contains not only a remembrance of your own love, but also this message which speaks of a token of His love:
"Inasmuch as we love you so much, and
'Inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these, . . . we have done it unto me'
Inasmuch as it is Christ's birthday and he said,
We are sending a very special love gift to one of His brethren."
New Strategy For Cold War Is Economic
Recent signs that official Washington is progressing into the operational phase of a new cold war strategy include:
"Competitive coexistence" may be out of the theorizing stance.
The decision to plan a major economic operation comparable in scope and importance to the Marshall Plan; the recall to Washington of former Budget Director Joseph Dodge to develop organizational plans for foreign economic activities; the decision to press at the next session of Congress for a three-year renewal and liberalization of the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act.
What it all means is that the U.S. is going to wage the new phase of the cold war with political and economic, rather than military action.
The Korean War phase, the negative efforts to restrict Communist aggression, are over. New economic policies which will help to develop all underdeveloped countries have been outlined by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles.
A "Marshall Plan" for Asia must be a more complex, slower moving venture than the one which saved postwar Europe from Communism. But this most critical cold-war battlefield of Southeast Asia will go by default if the West in its own "enlightened self-interest" does not help Asians to build up new, national economies and international economic cooperation.
The new economic offensive to win friends and allies will be waged on two fronts. Liberalized trade will be the principal economic goal in Europe. A new pattern of technical aid, loans and grants is the goal in Asia.
The major European allies have been restored to economic health. They no longer need the emergency aid of a Marshall Plan. What they need is an expanding market for their goods.
The task is staggering. Marshall Planning for Asia means filling vacuums with technical knowledge and urban methods in a society that is agricultural and primitive. The effort must be launched in an area of political flux and cultural disintegration. It must be launched against illiteracy and must be undertaken in the face of suspicions and resentments that are still the hangover of colonialism.
The job is enormous. But it is the free world's only alternative to atomic war.
-Dot Taylor
Now We Know
It has now been determined that Mt. Everest is 29.028 feet high, give or take ten feet, depending on the latest snowfall. It is not 29.022 feet as was held 100 years ago. The Indian Government has announced the new figure after a three-year survey of the peak itself. Which must have cost a bit of money. And now all you who have been lying awake nights mulling over this question can turn over and go to sleep.
A meeting house built by the Quakers in 1796 in Bolton. Mass., was rededicated at Old Sturbridge Village recently. The building was disassembled and moved 30 miles to Sturbridge "to establish a suitable memorial to the faith, fortitude and devotion of those who built and maintained it."
LITTLE MAN ON CAMPUS by Dick Bibler
"Well, we WERE going out tonight, but Herb gave three lousy tests today, and forgot this was Halloween nite."
'Across College Campuses'
New Use for the IBM
Thanks to lowly paper clips and a reclaimed adding machine carriage, the University of Denver has come up with a record-breaking, error-proof system of posting the grades of its 7,000 students which will save the school 4,000 man-hours of labor a year. By a simple process Registrar Charles Maruth has adapted an ordinary IBM tabulator to permanently record courses, grades and point averages of all students in less than 20 hours each quarter. The method involves only one manual operation; placing a plain paper clip at that point on each student's permanent record where current grades should be posted from grade cards. Before, the tabulators could not automatically find the precise spot at which to start printing. Now the paper clip sounds an electronic warning to the machine to start at that point. The reclaimed adding machine roll has been righted with an activator on the tabulator so that the student's number can be "transmitted" from his grade card to the adding machine paper tape. This permits the operator to "double check" that the right grades go on the right permanent card.
...Letters...
To the Editor:
(1) Miss Stephens hasn't ever played girls' basketball or she would know there are not five, but six, on a team. Furthermore, she has never watched a University intramural game or she would have seen that we do not sweler in sweat shirts, but wear ordinary sport blouses.
In answer to Miss Orrmont: Some of us like girls' basketball and some of us disapprove of it. But some of us who enjoy playing the game have observed that:
(2) Miss Ormont does not know that Miss Stephens does not know anything about girls' basketball. Anyone with Miss Stephens knowledge of the game is not capable of "superbly leveling the sport to the ridicule it so richly deserves."
(3) The ratio of girls who play basketball to the number of girls on the hill is approximately 1 to 7. To at least two of us "big, hairy spiders" managed to become finalists in the Homecoming queen contest. Perhaps "beauty, neatness, poise, grace, and sexual attraction" were not considerations in this contest, but this is a ratio of 1 to 5. We have out-numbered you here, and Miss Woodson had the honor of being a member of the sophomore all-star team, as well as a finalist.
we feel that it is Miss Ormerton's privilege to criticize girls' basketball if she so desires, just as we like to criticize music and art, but one with so little knowledge of the sport has no right to judge and classify its players as masculine. According to her theory, Miss Ormerton should have gained a great advantage now over those who have participated in sports (we suppose this also includes hockey, tennis, golf, swimming, and skating) and so we feel that it would have been to her advantage to keep her secret and quietly benefit from all those years of self-preservation.
Ruth Simpson College senior
F N
Daily Hansan
University of Kansas Student Newsaper
News Room, KU 251 Ad Room, KU 276
Member of the Inland Daily Press association. Associated Collegiate Press association. Represented by the National Advertising Association. Mail Subscription rates: $3 a semester or $4.50 a year (add $1 a semester if in New York). Mail every afternoon during the University year except Saturday and Sundays. University holidays and examination dates. Send mail to: College of Arts and Sciences, matter. Sept. 17, 1910, at Lawrence, King post office under act of March 3, 1870.
EXECUTIVE STATUS Editorial Editor Letty Lemon
Editorial Assistants
Dot Taylor, Amy DeYong