Never Too Late

Adler finally gets his B.A.

A master of the Socratic method, he has taught at Columbia University and the University of Chicago. He is chairman of the board of editors for the Encyclopaedia Britannica and the author of 30 books. His newest: How to Speak / How to Listen. With Educator Robert Maynard Hutchins, he compiled the Great Books of the Western World, 54 volumes of the world's classics. Last year he published The Paideia Proposal, a manifesto to reform U.S. primary and secondary education by instituting a standard and much more demanding curriculum. When he led the procession to Columbia College's commencement last week, however, the scholar was not there to give the main address. Mortimer Adler, still formidably active at 80, was getting the bachelor of arts degree he was denied in 1923 because he had cut gym classes and could not pass the swimming test.

Although Adler earned a Columbia Ph.D. in 1928, he was delighted when Columbia offered to waive the swimming requirement and gave him a belated B.A. (Adler was later given a pair of red swimming trunks by longtime friends Mr. and Mrs. Leonard Lauder. Lauder and Adler are on the board of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies.) Acknowledging that it was odd to get a B.A. 55 years after his Ph.D., Adler called the bachelor's a higher degree, "signifying a start in the process of becoming an educated person."

That left another gap in Adler's set of academic credentials. He had quit DeWitt Clinton High School in The Bronx before getting a diploma. Late last week the school's alumni association offered to make him an honorary graduate. This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so viewer discretion is required.