Education: American Assembly

Before he ever became a college president, Dwight D. Eisenhower made up his mind about one thing the U.S. needed: a system for getting the best of the nation’s brains—scholars and men of affairs—regularly around a conference table to thresh their way to agreement on the nation’s most pressing public questions. Last week Eisenhower announced that he was ready to begin. He called his project “The American Assembly.” He also called it “the most important step I have taken as president of Columbia University.”

Eisenhower’s idea is to set up a series of three-to-five-day conferences to take place eight times a year. For each meeting, he will invite some 30 to 40 notables from business, labor, the professions, politics and government to discuss such questions as taxation, the size of the armed forces, federal aid to education, what to do about Tito, what to do about Formosa. Before his guests arrive, an “intellectual task force” of scholars will chum out background research. When the assemblymen have talked their way through the problems, their conclusions will be published for the rest of the U.S. to chew on.

Eisenhower hopes to get his assembly started by April (before that, he must raise $500,000 to cover expenses). Eventually, he hopes, other universities will start assemblies of their own. “We are,” says he, “troubled with vague uncertainties, without really knowing what our problems and our worries are really about.” Would such assemblies be able to say? Says Eisenhower: “We will try.”