A “regional federation of independent nations” like the Pan-American Union in the Middle East was proposed today as a long-range solution to Middle East turmoil by David Sarnoff, chairman of the Board of the Radio Corporation of America.
Speaking at the 50th Anniversary exercises at Dropsie College of Hebrew and Cognate Learning, where he received the honorary degree of Doctor of Laws, Gen. Sarnoff said that “the building stones for turning the vision into a structure of reality” must be found “in the ideas and ideals held by the various Mid-east peoples, perhaps half-consciously apprehended even by the most lowly.”
Other honorary degrees were conferred on Rabbi Solomon B. Freehof of Pittsburgh; Rabbi Abba Hillel Silver of Cleveland; Dr. George N. Shuster, president of Hunter College; Prof. Solomon Zeitlin of Dropsie College; Herold W. Dodds, president of Princeton University; Abba Eban, Israeli Ambassador to the United States; and posthumously on the late Louis M. Rabinowitz of New York.
Gen. Sarnoff said “a profound understanding of Semitic cultures” was “highly relevant” to the solution of such problems as the Middle East conflicts. Commending the 50-year-old Dropsie College for having always cultivated an appreciation of fundamental scholarship,” Gen. Sarnoff said “we must have dependable insights into the mentality of the modern Arabs. We can hope to make Western ideals comprehensible to Moslem populations only if we discover the equivalents in their own spiritual and intellectual background.”
The Dropsie College was founded in Philadelphia in 1907 as a graduate institution for Hebrew learning and other branches of Semitic culture. Founded by Moses Aaron Dropsie, eminent Philadelphia lawyer, Dropsie College, is the only institution in America for higher Jewish learning without theological aspects and is completely non-sectarian.
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The Archive of the Jewish Telegraphic Agency includes articles published from 1923 to 2008. Archive stories reflect the journalistic standards and practices of the time they were published.
