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Through the Looking Glass

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 December 2020

Noël Annan*
Affiliation:
University College London

Extract

It is an honour to be asked to speak at the general session of the MLA. Every scholar in the Humanities would glow with pride as I did when I received your invitation. Thank you. Thank you for your hospitality, thank you for your welcome, and here let me salute your indomitable President Mr. Weigand. This talk has its genesis in a question which my secretary put to me when I was clearing things up in Cambridge in July 1964 before going off for my summer holiday—she said: “Did you know that this year you have been visited by 123 American academics?” It was true. Presidents, Deans, professors, members of faculty and of administration flowed like a sparkling stream through my office. Let me assure you that they did not come all as single spies. Sometimes they came in battalions, one contingent being in fact—I search for the right noun of collection—a regality or, perhaps, an in-sultanate of Regents.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
Copyright © 1967 by The Modern Language Association of America

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Footnotes

An address delivered at the 81st annual meeting of the MLA, in New York, 28 December 1966.

References

1 I am indebted in particular to “University Commentary: Notes on New Universities, British and American,” by David Riesman, Universities Quarterly, xx (March 1966), 128-146, and to Daniel Bell, The Reforming of General Education (New York and London, 1966); and I hope that in discussing administrative problems I have not forgotten the wider issues at present being discussed by such writers as Leslie Fiedler, Norman O. Brown, and Henry David Aiken.CrossRefGoogle Scholar