Friday, Dec. 4, 1964 University Daily Kansan
Page 5
State Department To Aid Minorities
Traditionally there have been very few members of minority groups in a professional position in the Department of State, according to Clifford Ketzel, associate professor of political science.
Now through the combined efforts of several organizations an internship program has been set up to assist in the training of Negroes and certain other minority groups, such as Spanish-speaking minorities, Puerto Ricans, and American Indians, who are interested in careers in the foreign affairs areas of the government.
FORTY JUNIORS from all over the nation will be selected for the program next year. They will be offered paid internships in the State Department, AID and USIA during the summer.
"This program is a desirable step on the part of the federal government to cooperate with Howard University and the Ford Foundation in their effort to make available greater opportunities for minority groups," Prof. Ketzel said.
"Part of this problem reflects the lack of educational preparation provided for minority groups as well as the attitude on the part of the Negroes that job opportunities were not open to them," Prof. Ketzel said.
"It's not just busy work." Spears said. "The work we were doing was really important and we had a lot of responsibility—the stuff I was working on was classified."
Spears worked in the State Department in the Bureau of Eastern and Southern African Affairs. He did research on South Africa,
The program is being administered by Howard University, in cooperation with the Department of State, the Agency for International Development, and the United States Information Agency.
He continued to explain the reasons there are historically so few members of minority groups in the State Department.
ARTHUR Spears, Kansas City senior, was the KU participant in the internship program last year.
Besides the research work, the interns attend lectures, seminars, and discussions. According to Spears, Dean Rusk and heads of the federal agencies spoke to the groups. Afterwards, the students had an opportunity to ask questions and talk personally with the high officials.
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Professor Lauds Jefferson's Idea
Thomas Jefferson, the scholar and the politician, placed above all else the significance of the individual in a free, diverse society. Professor Dumas Malone, visiting Phi Beta Kappa Scholar for 1964-65, said yesterday.
Addressing an audience in the Union, Prof. Malone, American historian and biographer of Thomas Jefferson, spoke on "Jefferson and Our Time."
"Jefferson was the champion of the free individual," Prof. Malone said. To him, the most important thing in the world, Prof. Malone said, was the individual human being living in a society characterized by diversity.
The threat to individual freedom is a culmination of the trends of progress, Prof. Malone said, such as the extreme progress of mechanization.
According to Prof. Malone, Jefferson thought diversity very desirable.
"Society would be as monotonous if everyone thought alike as it would be if everyone looked alike," Jefferson said.
Although this mechanization frees one from physical hardness, he said, people now are reduced to nothing but numbers.
"One can't help but shudder at future progress," Prof. Malone said. "It will not raise the dignity of man nor magnify his personality."
"We must keep reminding ourselves that all men are equal," he said, "not equal in status, nor abilities, but in their rights to be treated like human beings."
Not only is the individual freedom being swallowed up in the mechanization, Prof. Malone said, but in the expansion of bureaucracy.
Everyone is being swamped by the huge organizations, businesses and agencies which now run our world, Prof. Malone said. There is a gradual submersion of the individual into these consolidations, he said.
Thomas Jefferson believed the government was created for the individual, not the individual for the state. One of the main tasks of today's society, Prof. Malone said, is the humanizing of the institutions which were originally created for the individual and his needs.
Unless the individual rises above the anonymity of institutions he will fall victim to mass thinking where the individual will fade away, Prof. Malone said. This mass psychology takes over, he said, especially in a state of crisis, where personalities and faces are lost.