LARGE BENEFACTION TO UNIVERSITY

Dominion, Volume 28, Issue 112, 5 February 1935, Page 10

LARGE BENEFACTION TO UNIVERSITY

Pacific Ocean Studies The scope and composition of the School of Pacific Ocean Studies, for which provision has been made in die will of the late Professor J. Macmillan Brown, were the subject of comment and' suggestions recently by a Dunedin resident, who may be regarded as an authority in some parts of the field covered by the bequest.

He ptiid a tribute to the courage and physical vigour of the late professor, who had probably travelled more widely in Pacific lands than any other man. The most notable of his achievements iu the field of travel was undoubtedly his visit to Easter Island, paid at a period of life when most men seek the quiet of retirement, and involving considerable personal risks and privations. A tribute was also paid to Professor Macmillan Brown’s generosity. The amount of the endowment which will ultimately be available for the School of Pacific Ocean Studies is not definitely known, but would appear to be about £50.000, one of the largest benefactions ever received by a New Zealand university college, said the informant. Without any addition from the general funds of Canterbury College this should be sufficient to provide the salary of a professor and a lecturer. Travelling fellowships are also mentioned.

The- terms of the will, as reported, suggest that Professor Macmillan Brown especially desired a type 1 of instruction which would fit students for administrative work in the Polynesian Islands administered by New Zealand. For such a purpose, a chair of social anthropology would be required, working along the. lines already laid down by experience in the university teaching of anthropology at London, Cambridge, Oxford. Cape Town and Sydney. Excursion Into Political Education. Preliminary educational work would have to be carried out on some members of the New Zealand Cabinet, as well as on the Civil Service Commissioner, iu order to persuade them that training in the point of view of the native was highly desirable for those who had to administer native communities. Past experience in New Zealand suggested that the council of Canterbury College must find this excursion into political education a lengthy and disappointing job. . The terms of the will also indicated Professor Macmillan Brown’s interest in the languages and literature of Polynesia. It was to be supposed that teaching would be provided in this field, It was strange that the university colleges of New Zealand, while insisting on a high degree of scholarship in languages of distant and long-dead cultures. should never have made provision for scholarship in the languages spoken by Polynesians in our own land and in the islands of the'Pacific administered by New Zealand. It was remarkable also that, In spite of this lack of instruction in the past, the University of New Zealand had produced a number of men who had made a name in that field overseas: Jenness at Ottawa, Buck nt Honolulu. Firth in the University of London. The terms of the will indicated that rhe late professor’s fine library would be adequately housed, and that provision was made for its expansion.