Holland to Sweden

As an educator, Jerome Heartwell Holland has had considerable experience mediating between radicals and members of the Establishment. As a highly successful black man, he has moved with ease and authority in predominantly white circles. Now Holland will begin exercising his diplomatic skills in another area. In an appointment designed to thaw out Washington's relations with Stockholm, President Nixon last week nominated him to be Ambassador to Sweden.

The diplomatic cold front formed over a year ago when Sweden began granting asylum to U.S. Army deserters and then became the first Western country to grant official recognition to North Viet Nam. The situation was not eased when Premier Olof Palme, then Education Minister, marched in a Stockholm candlelight parade to protest American war policies. The Apollo 11 astronauts' world tour last fall pointedly omitted Sweden, and two months ago, Sweden announced that it would send Hanoi $45 million in reconstruction aid. In reply, the U.S. closed its consulate in Goteborg. More significantly, the U.S. has not had an ambassador in Stockholm since William Heath departed one year ago.

Many Swedes welcomed Holland's appointment, although the newspaper Expressen remarked cattily that every time a Swedish journalist asked the State Department for comment, its spokesman cracked, "Sorry, we really couldn't send you Eldridge Cleaver."

Bulging Curriculum. Jerome Holland, 54, is several thousand ideological parsecs away from any Black Panther. In an age of restive black-separatist movements, he is an almost evangelical integrationist with a resonant faith in competitive capitalist economics. Holland calls integration "my philosophy for living, as well as a practical reality." The black man's best hope, Holland believes, lies in education and job training.

Holland takes his stand with the assurance of a man whose curriculum vitae bulges with credentials of worthy, activist moderation. He is chairman of the board of the Planned Parenthood-World Population of Greater New York and a leading member of such organizations as the Red Cross, the United Negro College Fund, the Boy Scouts of America.

Since 1960, Holland, who holds a Ph.D. in sociology, has been president of Virginia's Hampton Institute, a 201-acre waterfront campus occupied by 2,600 students--all but 250 of them black. Holland lives on the edge of the campus in a handsome white colonial house surrounded by magnolia trees. The living room is decorated with African masks and figures, Haitian paintings and other souvenirs of family travels to Africa, the Caribbean, Eastern Europe and even Sweden. Laura Holland is a good match for a college president. She has a master's in psychology from Radcliffe and two years toward a Ph.D. at Harvard and Boston University. The Hollands have two children--Lucy, 14, and Joseph, 13.

Discreet Rhetoric. Dr. Holland likes to be called "Brud," a nickname for "brother" that his sisters hung on him years ago. A husky (230 Ibs.) six-footer, he still carries himself with the agility of a man who was twice an All-America end at Cornell and was elected in 1965 to the Football Hall of Fame.

In many ways it is natural that Holland should cherish the path of education. The son of a domestic-gardener-handyman in Auburn, N.Y., he was one of 13 children. He began working for his father at the age of eight and soon learned that schooling was the most available escape from poverty. He worked his way through Cornell with honor grades. Whatever discrimination he suffered, Holland is not anxious to discuss it.

His comments on his new job are so discreet that even he smiles at his easy assumption of striped-pants rhetoric. What of U.S.-Swedish relations? "I believe there has traditionally been a backlog of cooperation and friendship between the U.S. and Sweden." He is equally opaque about his politics. "I have studiously avoided telling anyone," he says with a broad smile, "whether I am a Republican, a Democrat or a socialist."

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