New Horizons at Howard

The new president of Washington. D.C.'s Howard University is a man with a grand dream and a curious problem. He is Attorney James Madison Nabrit Jr.. 59. dean of Howard's Law School and a major figure in the U.S. Negro's legal battle against segregation. His dream, as he takes over this month from retiring President Mordecai Johnson, 70, is to lift Howard from its present position as the nation's most important Negro University (6,507 students in ten schools and colleges) to top academic rank by anyone's standards. The trouble is that the job gets tougher all the time. One of the quirks of U.S. integration is that as discrimination wanes on white campuses, the wealthy Ivy League schools outbid Howard for able Negro students, and Howard gets increasing numbers of Southern applicants with poor preparation.

In a way, Nabrit has only himself to credit. One of seven children of an Atlanta preacher, he earned his law degree at Northwestern, then joined the Howard law faculty as a fledgling constitutional lawyer in 1936 and jumped into the battle for civil rights. Between teaching and setting up the first formal civil rights course in any U.S. law school, Nabrit argued discrimination cases in eleven states and the District of Columbia. He won major victories in getting the universities of Maryland, Oklahoma and Texas to admit Negro students, did much to abolish white primary elections in Texas. In 1954, joining Howard-trained Attorney Thurgood Marshall before the Supreme Court. Nabrit helped win the ruling against public-school segregation.

Though Howard may suffer temporarily (but not too severely: 75 major corporations recruited Howard seniors this year, and all 66 engineering graduates were snapped up), President-elect Nabrit thinks he knows how to get the scholarship level up where he wants it. He is determined to press for a better academic break for Southern Negro high school students. But his main goal is a kind of reverse integration for Howard itself. Instead of holding the line to accommodate Negroes, he intends to hike standards to the point where Howard will attract top scholars of all races--be they white, yellow, brown, or black--just as Harvard and Yale do. Howard already counts 40% white enrollment in its school of social work, and it has 706 students from 43 foreign lands. Nabrit wants more of both kinds in his colleges and graduate schools. "My goal for Howard." he says, "is to lead it into its new role as a major American university, into a normal society where a man is recognized for his own value and achievement."

The idea of a great, multiracial university with roots around the world is an exciting one for both Howard and the U.S. Like Nabrit himself, who returned last week as a delegate to the International Labor Conference in Geneva for the second year in a row. Howard faculty members frequently carry out foreign technical missions, particularly in Asia and Africa. Wherever they go, from starting a new medical school in Saigon to establishing a home economics department at the University of Baroda. India, they meet Howard alumni, who know the U.S. and understand what it is trying to accomplish. The horizons are limitless, says President-elect Nabrit. "As we seek to win the friendship of uncommitted areas, Howard plays a major role."

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