Harvard University - Red Book Yearbook (Cambridge, MA)

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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!-

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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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who preserve their infantile grace by studying English litera- ture because a small segment of the English language is their native tongue, French because a French governess shared in bringing them up, or Fine Arts or Music because with a little will-power it is possible to listen to records or look at slides without being forced into the painful processes of feeling or thinking. But such ellin beings are rare in postwar Harvard. By far the larger number of students in the humanities are so because they are eager to share in a tradition and to tap a vein of spiritual resource which are more needed than ever in days of hysteria, blindness, greed, and doubt. Men who want to think their way to freedom and peace as individuals and as members of society, often turn to music, art, or literature, and pursue the study of them with a seriousness and a passion which are the measures of their need and the proofs of the enduring value of the arts, both as means of understanding and as keys to a genuinely emancipated existence. An Anecdote for Laziness Such men are the bane of lazy teachers. They ask too many awkward questions, they will not be fobbed off with cliches, and they reject pedantic fact-finding or the amiable retailing of anecdote as substitutes for sound critical or his- torical study of the arts. In short, they insist on knowing, feeling, and thinking, the prime virtues of the humanistic scholar and, indeed, of the civilized citizen of the world, whatever his age, special tastes, or goal. But for the teacher who can conquer his laziness, postwar Harvard students are FRAN CIS MAG OUN U , PERRY MILLER Prof, uf Compurntlvc Lxtcruturn Professor of Amcricnn lritcruturc ARTHUR TILLMAN MERRITT ANDRE MORIZE Professor uf hrlrmic Professor of French Literature 4'fii , . ,...,, . U .f',:j.,., 524' v-1 :fra ' its: agile .1 'Ml . ,W William Sperry, Plummer Professor of Christian Morals and Dean of the Divinity School, has charge of Memorial Church. LEONARD OPDYCKE Associate l'rofc-ssor oi lfinc Arts FREDERICK PACKARIP, JR. ARTHUR PEASE I JOHN JOSEPH PENNY ROBERT PFEIFFER CHANDLER POST Assoc. Prufcssor of Public Speaking Pope I rofcssur ofthe Lntm Senior Pri-ccptnr m ROIIHIIIPO Lecturer on Semitic Lumzuagcs Boardman Professor nf Finn Arts LUUEUUZC and L 'f'mlUf0 LIIHZUI-HECS Curator of the Semitic Museum fl44l