Dean Upped

The plum of a college presidency goes more often to an outsider than an insider. Last week the administrators of Tulane University in New Orleans turned their backs on that precedent as Yale did last month (TIME, Feb. 22), by electing as Tulane's next president Dr. Rufus Carrollton Harris, the 39-year-old Dean of Tulane's crack law school.

A good all-round university, Tulane has an illustrious medical school more than a century old, a football team that often tops the Southern Conference, an administration spunky enough to hold up its end of a feud with Kingfish Huey Long after refusing him an honorary degree. An all-round educator, President-Elect Harris was born in Georgia and went to Mercer University there, graduating in 1917, just in time to serve as a Wartime first lieutenant of infantry. After that he studied at Yale Law School, became a Doctor of Jurisprudence, reached his Tulane deanship in 1927. He established Tulane's nationally famed Law Review. He hopes to continue teaching at least one law class even after he takes over the presidency formally on Commencement Day in June. Dr. Harris has three sons to trim at his favorite sport, "cowboy" pool, a racy variant of billiards played with three balls on a pocket table.

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