HARVARD—ALMA MATER TO SIX U.S. PRESIDENTS

Press, Volume C, Issue 29506, 6 May 1961, Page 8

HARVARD—ALMA MATER TO SIX U.S. PRESIDENTS

University Founded By Englishmen

[By H. B GARLAND] 'THREE HUNDRED and twenty-five years ago, on October 28,1636, the government of the Colony of Massachusetts Bay voted 400 English pounds for the establishment of a college at Cambridge, Massachusetts, which would “educate the English and Indian youth in knowledge and Godliness.” The Puritan migration from England to Massachusetts had brought to the future United States a group of educated men unique in the annals of colonisation. It included more than 100 graduates from the Universities of Oxford and Cambridge. No wonder, then, that these men were determined that their sons should have an excellent education. John Harvard, after whom the college (and later university) is named, was not its founder, but its first benefactor. He bequeathed to the college on the Charles River, 15 kilometres from Boston, his library of 300 volumes and half his estate. Since that time Harvard has grown to he one of the largest and best-equipped universities in the United States.

“No computation of the present-day giant Harvard electrical brain can fathom the total in ’ood and goods of that small bequest of books and pounds,” said a Harvard man recently. Harvard, which became a university in 1780. kept pace with the progress of the country as a whole. Its first (honorary) doctorate of law was awarded in 1778, the year of the Declaration of Independence. to George Wallington, who later became the nation’s first President. Harvard’s Medical School was established in 1782. A Divinity School was added in 1818, a Faculty of Arts and Sciences in 1825. In the following years many other graduate schools and faculties were established. Students can take courses on any subject that is being taught in any university in the country Profound Influence Harvard is not only the oldest institution of higher learning in the United States, but also it has profoundly influenced American education and the trend of American politics. Six American presidents are among its alumni—John Adams, John Quincy Adams, Rutherford B. Hayes, Theodore Roosevelt, Franklin D. Roosevelt, and the present President, John F. Kennedy. President Kennedy received his Bachelor of Science degree from Harvard in 1940 and in 1956 was awarded an honorary Doctor of Law degree. President Kennedy has selected four out of his 10 Cabinet members from Harvard alumni. In addition, he has named a number of Harvard professors or graduates as his assistants or close advisers. Harvard also claims proudly many alumni and teachers in the field of literature. The list includes Ralph Waldo Emerson. Henry David Thoreau, Henry B. Longfellow, Edwin A. Robinson, Robert Frost, T. S. Eliot and John Dos Passos, to mention just a few. The university’s drama laboratory, “47 Workshop,” ■was the training school of Eugene O’Neill, Thomas Wolfe and others. Many justices of the United States Supreme Court, Nobel Prize winners and renowned scientists, diplomats, and educators have graduated from Harvard. But what, in the eyes of many, gives Harvard its special place among the great number of old and new universities in the world today? It is not its age nor the number of its students—about 12.000 with about 4400 teachers—nor the list of the great men who studied in its

• halls, or are to be found [ among its professors. It is something else. It is the 1 kind of education it offers. Why this is so has been ’ expressed many times and in i many different ways in speeches, books, and magai zine essays by Harvard ; teachers or alumni. Essen- > tially, it is the fact that edu- : cation at Harvard always has • been and is today character- • ised by individualism, by a ! refusal to accept values on • first appearance, and by the . emphasis on general educa- . tion. William James, the Amerii can philosopher, phrased it ; this way: "Harvard is a ' nursery for independent and lonely thinkers.” President Franklin D. Roosevelt said in 1936, at the tercentenary of his Alma Mater: “Here are to be trained not lawyers ; and doctors merely, not teachers and businessmen merely: here is to be trained in the fullest sense—Man” Dr. James Bryan Conant. Harvard president from 1933 to 1953, once observed that Harvard "was founded by dissenters,” and that “we are proud of the freedom which made this (heresy) possible even when we most dislike some particular form of heresy we may encounter.” And his successor, Dr. Nathan M. Pusey, spoke of Harvard's ■ “deeply imbedded tradition 1 which permits man to be the i conscientious judge of his ■ own responsibilities.” Samuel Eliot Morrison, the historian, ■ called “the principle of ’ liberty of mind" the “most ’ important aspect of Harvard’s tradition.” The writer : Donald Moffat summarised 1 this idea in two short sen- ■ tences: “If education may be ■ defined in one word, that word is controversy. Where concord reigns, learning withers. , Where conflict rules, it flourishes.” And i James W. Angell, the economist, said: “The quality which has particularly earned admiration and respect for Harvard all over the world, is intellectual integrity." ■ “Search For Truth” Abbot Lawrence Lowell, i one of Harvard's past presi- ' dents, spoke of Harvard’s ! "search for truth” in these ; words: “We have believed that ; the problem of Harvard is > really a moral problem. We . want men to think, and think . seriously. We do not want i them to think alike. That is an entirely different mat- ’ ter. We have stood, and we . always shall stand, for absot lute freedom of thought ■ under any circumstances, 1 both with our professors and ■ with our students. We do : not want them made in a I pattern. In other words, > if I may parody the motto i of the university—"Veritas”

(truth)—what we desire here is not the truth, but the search for truth.” The search for truth, truth, which the Puritans had in mind when they founded Harvard—striving for new spiritual as well as materialistic frontiers—remained its goal through the centuries. And perhaps President Kennedy was thinking of this search for truth and Harvard’s recognition of the . importance of individualism when he stated in his State of the Union Message on January 30, 1961: “Let it be clear that this administration recognises the value of dissent, and daring, that we greet healthy controversy as the hallmark of healthy charge." Charles Dickens visited Harvard in 1842, and he later wrote. in his “American Notes”: "Whatever the defects of American universities may be. they disseminate no prejudices: rear no biggo ts; dig up the ashes of no old superstition; exclude no man because of his religious opinions; above all, in their whole course of study and instruction, recognise a world, and a broad one too, lying beyond the college walls.” Were the great English novelist to revisit Harvard today, he would have nothing to add to these words, and nothing to change. Perhaps it is because the aim of education at Harvard has always been to think effectively, to communicate thought, to discriminate among values, that the university has been able to assemble the largest university library in the world, with more than 6,500,000 volumes. It has also established an art museum, a botanic garden, a Germanic museum, a Semitic museum, three astronomical and meteorological observatories, an institute for instruction in the culture of Asia and many other laboratories and study centres. And the Harvard University Press has published more than 4000 volumes on the humanities and natural and social sciences since 1913. Even the student newspaper, the "Harvard Crimson,” published six times a week, is unique. It is completely independent of the university. Its editors can write about whatever they want, in any way they want. (The paper received its name from the Harvard flag, which is crimson). One of the courageous editors of the “Crimson” was President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Harvard teachers and alumni have always been and are today in the forefront of those who are fighting tyranny, who abhor dictatorships, who strive to better the lot of their neighbours, who try to help them to satisfy their own aspirations, and who want to live in peace and friendship with free men anywhere, at any time.—United States Information Service.