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Journalism of Courage
It’s a challenging time for America’s oldest university, as it stands embroiled in a legal battle with President Donald Trump’s government. And yet, Harvard has been holding its own; a reflection of the values that have marked its long and prestigious history, one that was marked by resilience and rebellion.
The absence of an institution of repute in New England led to the genesis of Harvard, the oldest of America’s Ivy League schools. “Yale, Princeton, Harvard, Brown are all plugged in the northeast, in New England. Harvard has played a major role in building this geographical cluster,” says Mohit Sinha, an alumnus of Harvard, in an interview with indianexpress.com.
An eight-acre house comprising a one-acre cow yard was quickly purchased to build the College. By 1637, Harvard had its first Master, Cambridge alumnus Nathaniel Eaton. Interestingly, the university was not always called Harvard. “When it was set up, it was called New College. It was renamed Harvard College after its biggest benefactor, John Harvard,” remarks Sinha. Harvard, on his deathbed, gave to the university his library and estate.
Eaton, however, was quickly dismissed on charges of brutality and physical abuse. The arrival of Cambridge graduate Henry Dunster as the president in 1640 offered a glimmer of hope. “The youngest in the long line of Harvard presidents, he proved to be one of the greatest,” writes alumnus and author Samuel Eliot Morison in Three Centuries of Harvard (1636-1936). His effort was particularly concentrated on completing the college buildings.
By the 1650s, Harvard had about 60 students enrolled. Boys had come from Bermuda, Virginia, New Amsterdam, and even England, where Harvard degrees were now accepted by Oxford and Cambridge as equivalent to their own. A dispute with the administration, unfortunately, led Dunster to resign in 1654. “Harvard University grew out of the Liberal Arts college as Dunster left it,” remarks Morison.
Academic and student life in the seventeenth-century Harvard was guided by the Catholic Church. A college pamphlet from 1643 states the vision of the College: “To advance learning and perpetuate it to Posterity; dreading to leave an illiterate ministry to the churches.” In other words, a learned clergy was what Harvard was expected to supply.
An average day for a Harvard student began and ended with prayer, which included the recitation of a chapter of Scripture by the President. Saturdays were dedicated to preparations for the Sabbath, which included worship and meditation. Students, according to Morison, were reminded that the focus of their academic pursuit was the greater knowledge of God. It was thus no surprise that Harvard, at the time, was known as the ‘School of Prophets,’ and its men as the ‘Sons of Prophets.’
The 1700s were a period of prosperity for Harvard. The decade began with the Presidency of John Leverett. His first concern was to refurbish the dilapidated college buildings. Tables, chairs, feather beds, and looking glasses were supplied in abundance. While no major changes were made to the curriculum, the number of student enrollments increased. French was also introduced as a subject. Interestingly, the French tutor was the only staff member without a Harvard degree.
Expulsion was a particularly dreadful process. After assembling the entire college in the hall, the President would announce the crime and sentence. The butler would then strike off the name of the offenders from the bulletin board, which contained the names of all members of the College. However, the culprit could publicly confess their misdeeds and be forgiven as per the Christian principle.
Another notable aspect was that until 1749, classes at Harvard were placed in order of the presumed social rank of parents. However, as classes grew bigger, the process turned complex. In 1769, the decision was made that arrangements would now be alphabetical. Leverett’s leadership helped Harvard grow from a weak institution to one of considerable repute. According to Morison, it was Leverett who founded the liberal tradition of Harvard University.
Discussion on the Harvard of the eighteenth century cannot be without the university’s response to the American Revolution (1775-1783). Experts and accounts claim that Harvard men played a significant part in carrying through the Revolution. Plato’s dialogues and Aristotle’s virtues guided their actions of the time. Morison mentions several public speaking clubs, including the Speaking Club, the Mercurian Club, and the Clintonian Club, were established as secret societies in the College.
Yet, the American Revolutionary War placed the College under difficult circumstances. Students fell in numbers, supplies fell short, and wartime inflation exacerbated the ongoing financial crisis.
The dominant feeling at Harvard during the Civil War (1861-1865) was for the Union, which advocated conciliation as well as the abolition of slavery. “Harvard very clearly fought for the Union. A lot of constitutional lawmaking, post the Civil War, was done by Harvard scholars, both ex-students as well as faculty,” says Sinha. Harvard, thus, has had a central role in establishing the legal framework of the country. “And there’s always been dissent.”
However, college went on as usual, and attendance was normal. President Abraham Lincoln kept his son at Harvard at the time, until his graduation in 1864. This was also the century when Harvard expanded significantly. The Medical School, set up in 1782, introduced entrance examinations, and laboratories for Physiology and Microscopic Anatomy were created.
The summer of 1900 also witnessed Harvard open its doors for women. Harvard president Charles William Eliot mentioned the move to make the university gender-inclusive. However, he was cautious to say that Harvard would avoid “the difficulties involved in common residence of hundreds of young men and women of immature character and marriageable age.”
“There was the Radcliffe College, which was a girls’ college that was associated with Harvard, but it was a separate identity,” explains Sinha. It was only in the 1970s that the college was drafted into Harvard University.
The 389-year-old journey of Harvard has several lessons to offer. “What Harvard is doing today in terms of pushing back is not its first,” says Sinha. From the American War of Independence through the Civil War, we see Harvard’s resilience in the face of conflict. This, the ‘Harvard man,’ Sinha, asserts, will be another successful litigation case against the Trump administration.
