New Prex for L.S.U.

New Prex for LS.U.

Louisiana State University is the Deep South's largest university.* It once had a good medical school (which is making a comeback) and long supported a distinguished literary magazine, the Southern Review. Ever since the killing of Patron Huey Long, L.S.U. has tried to get out from under a reputation for control by politicians. Last week, after a five-month search, L.S.U.'s Board of Supervisors picked a new president. They had deliberately gone outside the state to find him.

The man they picked was 44-year-old Walter Stoke, a mild-mannered political scientist who has been president of the University of New Hampshire since 1944. The son of a Methodist minister, Walter Stoke spent most of his boyhood in the Southwest (he picked cotton in Texas), was schooled in the Midwest and went to New England for his first major academic job. At N.H.U., he allowed students their first effective self-government, persuaded the state legislature to boost his university's appropriation by 50%.

As a political scientist, Walter Stoke, has long been working on a book to guide people in evaluating political ideas and politicians, a project which might have been useful in Louisiana a decade ago. Stoke favors no political party ("Temperamentally I'm bent to be against the party in power"), and no pat educational theory ("Both John Dewey and Robert Hutchins can play on my team"). But by the time L.S.U.'s Board of Supervisors picked him from 144 candidates, they knew what his terms would be. He had made it clear that he wanted "full authority to administer the affairs of the university without political or other interference." The supervisors said O.K.

* The Southwest's University of Texas tops it by almost 8,000 students.

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