Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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HARVARD NINETEEN THIRTY-FOUR CLASS ALBUM Harvardis New President and His Objectives Editofs Note: Thefollowz'ng two articles on Presidenlt Conan! and Lowell, by Mr. H. 1. Brock 0fthe New York Times, reprexent the im- partial judgment ofa trained observer who, although not a Harvard man, has had the opportunity to become thoroughly acquainted with Harvard. The editors ofthe ALBUM do not necessarily endorse the opinions exprested in these articlet, which are reprinled by special permission from Sunday editions of the Times. WHIS is an age ?;52' mt. 0f dictators. Vitiiigg As a rule the a ' SLTQEA' dictators up- on whom the eyes of the world are fixed have seized the power they wield within the last few years or months. Either they have been lifted to the top by a revolution, as in Russia, or they have pushed aside the monarch or other constituted author- ity by a controlled revo- lution, as was done by Mussolini in Italy. But at Harvard, in liberty-proclaiming Mas- sachusetts, it is different. At Harvard for three long generations the president ofthe university has been czar. He is still czar. No matter that his vast power is, in a fashion, extra-legalathat it derives principally from his position as head of a small self-perpetuating corporation in which is lodged complete financial control and final, if not quite so unlimited, responsibility for the conduct of the institution otherwise. What counts most, therefore, at Harvard is who is president. For twoscore years Charles W. Eliot ruled and set the mold of the Harvard man. For a score and odd years more Abbott Lawrence Lowell controlled the stamping mill. Now there is a new president; therefore a new Harvard, though the new man has been in harness only a few months. Everybody feels it, notwithstanding that the difference discoverable to the eye is principally that, instead of the familiar figure of Mr. Lowell, moving unobtrusively about the yard, there is the no- longer-strange, but very different iigure of James Bryant Conant, moving about the yard, just as unobtrusively. The path from the president's house to the president's office leads right through the Yard and the normal course of the presidenfs peregrinations is along this path. But never mind: wherever he goes he goes unobtrusively. Other members of the university, whether professors of the faculty or under- graduates, pay no more attention to his goings and comings than they pay to the goings and comings of any other familiar local figure. Or they seem not to. None the less, there is a new Harvard since June of last year. And everybody at Harvard knows it. The recent an- nouncement of freshman fellowships for ctstudents of rare ability and promise'i-fellowships covering on a modest scale full college expenses, and though for the present limited to young men ttliving and attending schoolii in six Middle Western States, designed eventually to bring together at Harvard ttoutstanding students from every section'i of the Mr. Conant as a student country--is the strongest indication so far that the new era is taking practical shape. Among the prodigious accomplishments of Mr. Lowell,s twenty-three years of command was the creation of the elaborate modern plant of the university of which Dr. Eliot was the spiritual father, the practical rebuilding of the old college into seven units, each bigger than the old college used to be, and the distribution into these units called cthousesl, of the t'amorphous mass,' of undergraduates. Incidentally, in that twenty-three years a hundred million dollars was added to the endowment, These things have been done. The big job of Mr. Lowellts successor is not to be builder but operator; to see that the best material and the best workmanship go into the educational product. The sense that he means to dojust this thing is what is in the air and makes the new Harvard. Lowell, in fact, was neglectful neither of educational material nor of educational workmanship, but he had the shop to build first. Conant can concentrate on the product. And he is equipped to do it. The twenty-third president of Americas oldest and best- known institution dedicated to the advancement and per- petuation of learning was translated to his post of high com- mand from the chemical laboratory, where his researches had won him world-wide recognition as a iirst-rate productive scientist. Yet he is just short of41 years old and looks a deal younger. Outstanding characteristics of the man are simplicity, a frankness which takes on at times the quality of downright boyish candor, and a mind trained to face facts and habitu- ated to direct, and courageous but unhurried action. The distinction is important. An effect of not being hurried at all is one of the strongest impressions received in his presence. There is also the impression ofa clear Vision of what essential- ly needs doing and a strong will to do it, brooking no fruitless delayw-yet with an open, alert and considerate mind about the means of getting it done. Oliver Cromwell is one of the worlds strong men that Conant particularly admiresaas is proper and natural in a descendant of the excellent Puritan, Roger Conant, who came to Massachusetts in the early days of the liberal stir which eventually made Cromwell master of England and lost King Charles his head. Cromwell had his aimsahigh ones--his iron will to achieve those aims, but so fluid was his mind in regard to the real signihcance of passing events and current causesidetermining which side he stood on at one time and anotherathat he has been roundly abused for inconsistency or worse. Taking this as parable, it may well be that Conant, too, in the means he adopts, will be opportunist or strategisti-as you will. He learned in the laboratory to deal with facts and deal with them patiently, with the single object of producing re- sults. It is results that he is after as president of Harvard. The particular results he is after are determined by ideals of educationi;which in this mild-mannered man twith the blue eyes that not infrequently indulge in a gaminlike twinkle behind his steel-rimmed spectaclesl are cherished with al-