James Bryant Conant - President of Harvard

President of Harvard

On October 9, 1933, Conant became the President of Harvard University with a low-key installation ceremony in the Faculty Room of University Hall. This set the tone for Conant's presidency as one of informality and reform. At his inauguration he accepted the charter and seal presented to John Leverett the Younger in 1707, but dropped a number of other customs, including the singing of Gloria Patri and the Latin Oration. This was a sign of things to come. While, unlike some other universities, Harvard did not require Greek or Latin for entrance, they were worth double credits towards admission, and students like Conant who had studied Latin were awarded an A.B. degree while those who had not received an S.B. One of his first efforts at reform was to attempt to abolish this distinction, but it took over a decade to accomplish. But in 1937 he wrote:

I do not see how one can make very much headway as a student... of history and literature without a reading knowledge of Latin. I do not see how a person can go very far in any branch of science without a thorough understanding of mathematics, and if the underpinning was bad in school, probably the necessary calculus and so forth would not have been taken during the college years. I know that a man cannot be a research chemist without a reading knowledge of German. It is hard to acquire it as the first language in college.

Other reforms included the abolition of class rankings and athletic scholarships, but his first, longest and most bitter battle was over tenure reform, shifting to an "up or out" policy, under which scholars who were not promoted were terminated. A small number of extra-departmental positions was set aside for outstanding scholars. This policy led junior faculty to revolt, and nearly resulted in Conant's dismissal in 1938. Conant was fond of saying: "Behold the turtle. It only makes progress only when it sticks its neck out."

Conant added new graduate degrees in education, history of science and public policy, and he introduced the Nieman Fellowship for journalists to study at Harvard. He supported the "meatballs", as lower class students were called. He instituted the Harvard national Scholarships for underprivileged students. Dudley House was opened as a place where non-resident students could stay. Conant asked two of his assistant deans, Henry Chauncey and William Bender, to determine whether the Scholastic Aptitude Test was a good measure of academic potential. When they reported that it was, Conant adopted it. He waged a ten-year campaign for the consolidation of testing services, which resulted in the creation of the Educational Testing Service in 1946, with Chauncey as its director. Theodore H. White noted that "Conant was the first president to recognize that meatballs were Harvard men too."

Instead of conducting separate but identical undergraduate courses for Harvard students and students from Radcliffe College, Conant instituted co-educational classes. It was during his presidency that the first class of women were admitted to Harvard Medical School in 1945, and Harvard Law School in 1950. Lowell had imposed a 15 percent quota on Jewish students in 1922, something Conant had voted to support. This quota was later substituted with geographic distribution preferences, having the same effect of limiting Jewish admission. Conant eased these preferences later in his presidency. In the words of historians Morton and Phyllis Keller, he "shared the mild antisemitism common to his social group and time."

In 1934, Ernst Hanfstaengl attended the 25th anniversary reunion of his class of 1909, and gave a number of speeches, including the 1934 commencement address. Hanfstaengl wrote out a check for 2,500 Reichsmarks (roughly equivalent to US$182,418 as of 2012) to Conant for a scholarship to enable an outstanding Harvard student to study for a year in Germany. The President and Fellows of Harvard College rejected the offer due to Hanfstaengl's Nazi associations. When the issue of Hanfstaengl's scholarship came up again in 1936, Conant turned the money down a second time. Hanfstaengl's presence on campus prompted a series of anti-Nazi demonstrations, in which a number of Harvard and MIT students were arrested. Conant made a personal plea for clemency that resulted in two girls being acquitted, but six boys and a girl were sentenced to six months in prison.

When the University of Berlin awarded an honorary degree to Roscoe Pound, who had made no secret of his admiration for the Nazi regime, Conant refused to order Pound not to accept it, and attended the award ceremony. While he declined to participate in the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars, Harvard awarded honorary degrees to Thomas Mann and Albert Einstein in 1935. What Conant feared most was disruption to Harvard's tercentennial celebrations in 1936, but there was no trouble, despite the presence of Franklin D. Roosevelt of the class of 1904, whom many Harvard graduates regarded as a socialist and a class traitor. It was only with difficulty that Lowell was persuaded to be presiding officer at an event at which Roosevelt spoke.

An incident took place during the 1941 Harvard–Navy lacrosse game, when the Harvard Crimson men's lacrosse team attempted to field a player of African-American descent. The Navy Midshipmen men's lacrosse team's coach then refused to field his team. Harvard's athletic director, William J. Bingham, overruled his lacrosse coach, and had the player, Lucien Victor Alexis, Jr., sent back to Cambridge on a train. Conant subsequently apologized to the Commandant of Midshipmen. After serving in World War II, Alexis was refused admittance to Harvard Medical School on the grounds that, as the only black student, he would have no one to room with.