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¶ New York University's Ernest O. Melby, 64, for eleven years dean of the School of Education. A Ph.D. from the University of Minnesota, Melby rose from small-town teacher and school superintendent to be dean of Northwestern University's School of Education, president of Montana's State University, and finally, chancellor of Montana's higher educational system. But it was not until he got to N.Y.U. that he came into his own as a kind of senior defense counsel for the U.S. public school against those who insisted that it had sacrificed its intellectual content. He set up N.Y.U.'s Center for Human Relations Studies and its Center for Community and Field Services, stumped the country for a school that would be merged with the community. "In this human-centered universe," said Melby, "there is no perfect hierarchy of truth, there are no criteria beyond the realm of experience . . . Anything to be learned must be lived . . . The building of a bridge may be more effective in teaching Johnny Jones to think than the study of Plato."
¶ Syracuse University's gangling T. (for Thomas) V. (for Vernor) Smith, 66, whose wise and witty lectures induced hundreds of students to expose themselves to philosophy. As a full professor at the University of Chicago, red-haired Philosopher Smith served in the state senate, later was elected to the U.S. House of Representatives, was so staggered by the plethora of bills born each session that he demanded Congress "practice birth control." An intellectually humble man who called his students "my junior colleagues," he once said: "Knowledge eventuates as wisdom only in those who claim no monopoly on knowledge. Wisdom is the true lord and seldom fails of the deference that true lordship deserves."