Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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without which no world, however rich in means for self- destruction or in its ability to exploit machines, can hope to survive. The quest takes many forms, of course, but now as always the humanities-----the arts broadly so called eare demonstrating their essential value for any life which is to rise above fears and crass material compulsions and to achieve freedom for hearts and minds not content with the bare physi- cal necessities of animal existence. The dark visions of those who read anticipatory funeral services over the humanities have been dispelled. Harvard students have not come back from the war solely interested in continuing work as chemists, physicists, personnel experts, or artists in the taking ofhuman life, but as men eager to find answers to questions which are not answered in laboratories or camps or by the most diligent management of statistics. Pitiful as the years of peace have been, it is plain that what little progress has been made toward making the world possible to live in has come less from mechanical instruments and skills than from the efforts of some men to understand others and to find a basis for a decent society through such understanding. These men have worked to guarantee the freedom that comes only when men are able to strive to realize all their potentialities as thinking and feeling beings and able to recognize their duty to safeguard for others the opportunities they enjoy themselves. Professor Matthiessen at a tutorial conference. An authority on Henry james and T. S. Eliot, he is a militant Crusader for WILHEI.M KOEHLER GEORGE T. LeBOUTIl.I.IER l'1'ol'1-ssorof l1'im-Arts Assislnlil. l'rol1-ssor ol' IJ:-sign CLARENCE LEWIS FREDERICK W. LIEDER l'it-rr-0 l'rof4-ssor of Pliilosoplxy Assoc. Prof. of fil'l'Illllll, l'lllll'l'llllS democratic socialism. He was one of the founders of the Harvard Teachers Union. P ' ,.'! sv- I E

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Director of the Glee Club and Professor of Music, G. Wallace Woodworth frequently conducts the Boston Symphony. likely to have repercussions on undergraduate training in the Held. The Department of Classics undertook to find new ways Of relating its work to that of other areas and of arousing interest among students specializing in other subjects. Fine Arts set up a new type of departmental examination and Music Completely remodelled its curriculum, winning new students by the change. On the graduate level Romance Languages recognized two kinds of specialization, one in linguistics and one in literary history and criticism, thereby accepting a prin- ciple sure to be reflected in undergraduate instruction. Perry Miller's promotion to a professorship of American literature represented the first use of that title at Harvard and was an ofiicial recognition of the importance of the study of our native writers in current liberal education. A new department of Comparative Literature, planned for during several years, was officially established in 1947, to supplement the work already being done in literary and linguistic fields. These are only a few of the items in the record of the past half-dozen years which demonstrate that individuals and departments in hu- mane fields at Harvard have not been idle. In spite of all the handicaps ofa troubled time they have shown their confidence in those fields and have done much to provide opportunities for students in them. The Quest for Ideas and Faiths Their confidence has been abundantly justified. The transplanted professor who was so despairing in 1942 is now teaching again and the students who throng his classes are doing work on a level of seriousness and intelligence rare in his experience. Other teachers and hosts of other students are devoting themselves to a quest for the ideas and faiths 4411 WALTER CLARK Wztlvs Proft-ssurufSuli:1kri!. RAPHAEL DEMOS Alford Profs-ssnr of Nntiuritl Religion Mural Pliilosnpliy mul Civil Polity MARCEL FRANCON Asruuw. Prof. nf l rc-uc-li l.itcrul.uri' WILLIAM CHASE GREENE Profm-ssor of Uri-uk und Latin ALBERT J. GUERARD Associate l'rofv:4:mr of lixxglirill JOHN PHILLIPS COOLIDGE Assoi-:mv l'rnfvssnr of lfim- Arg., Dire:-for uf Fngg Art lxluspml, l IRVING FINE Assistimt l'rol'vssor of Music HENRY A. FROST l'rofi-ssorufAr1'l1iti'1'tl1r1- WALTER GROPIUS 1'ruf4-sr-lor of :hl 1'lllll'i1i-llI'0 ROBERT HILLYER Boylston l'rnl'i-sz-mr nf Omtnry und lllu-tnric Cllesigncd 10453

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Noted for his detailed knowledge of medieval church design, Professor Kenneth Conant also teaches a course in the history of American architecture. The realization and the recognition are the goals of the proper study of the humanities. That study alone will not serve the turn, but it is no more absurd to hold that a scholar in an ivory tower full of books, paintings, and music, needs nothing else, than it is to suppose that someone to whom all these things are quite unfamiliar can ever understand himself or other men. The humanities are still the best source of intimate comprehension of the basic qualities and values by which men and women live. However indispensable it is for the humane student to know enough of social institutions, governmental forms, and ways of dealing with the physical environment, it is no less indispensable to see that in the last analysis the institution, the form, and the utility of the ma- terial conquest, depend upon the moral and intellectual quality of men and women. To understand what is in the deepest sense morally and intellectually good and bad is the task and privilege of the student of the humanities. To evade the lure Of appearance and come as close as may be to cardinal reality is his problem. The works of art he knows, the history he Arthur Pope retired as head of the Fogg Art Museum last year. Along with Professor Paul Sachs, he made Fogg the No. 1 training school for U. S. museum curators and directors. makes part of his experience, the imaginative insights he achieves, the myths he learns to recognize and to assess in their relation to wise living, are the foundations for his under- standing of life. The Proper Harvardian That all this is remembered at present-day Harvard, in spite of the temptations to forgetfulness imposed by the exigencies of both the war and the peace, is shown, so far as it can be statistically, by the fact that in 1946-47 English was the largest field of study in the Graduate School and that the total percentage of undergraduates concentrating in the humanities last year is nearly as high as in 1941-42, and in a few departments, higher. If statistics were all, this might be laid to the inertia of the proper Harvardian who is loyal to the traditional habits of his tribe. That there is more in it than this is, however, known to every teacher of the humanities who has observed the reactions of his students. There are, of course, still the Hoaters and the drifters, the Ugabardine swine as a Harvard wit once called them, the charming folk Kenneth Murdock heads the Committee on Ameri- can Civilization, a gradu- ate program designed to integrate the study of American culture. He is a critic of 17th Century Eng- lish and American litera- ture. nun:-... IXUS, -'IK , ii!-