Strout awarded honorary doctorate

Richard L. Strout, Monitor Washington correspondent dubbed "the journalist with the Proustian eye," was made honorary Doctor of Letters June 2 at Brown University.

For nearly 60 years -- since the Harding administration -- Mr. Strout has covered American politics with what Brown president Howard R. Swearer called "style, wit, and downright common sense."

Mr. Strout won a Pulitzer Prize for journalism in 1978 and the prestigious Fourth Estate Award of the National Press Club in 1975.

He came to The Christian Science Monitor in 1921 from the Boston Post and has been at the Monitor's Washington bureau since 1923 -- except for a stint as a war correspondent during World War II.

TRB to readers of the New Republic, Mr. Strout has contributed to the weekly magazine column for 37 years and for years has been its chief author. His books include "Farewell to Model T" (1936) written with E. B. White and "TRB: Views and Perspectives on the Presidency" (Macmillan, 1979).

Mr. Strout graduated from Harvard in 1919, and earned a Harvard Master of Arts degree in 1923.

"In your balanced and well-researched political analyses in The Christian Science Monitor and your incisive, often indignant TRB columns in the New Republic," Dr. Swearer told Mr. Strout at the ceremony, "you have consistently maintained the highest standards of reporting and have been for many years an example of integrity and professionalism to your colleagues."