PROFESSOR BAKER RESIGNS FROM HARVARD FACULTY

The resignation of Professor George Pierce Baker '87 Professor of Dramatic Literature at the University was officially announced last night. It came as a complete surprise to everyone connected with the University. No reason was given for Professor Baker's action and it was impossible to ascertain at a late hour last night just what action will be taken by the University authorities in regard to the continuance of Professor Bakers courses.

The disappointment in the University over the resignation of Professor Baker was decidedly aggravated on receipt of the information that he is leaving to accept the directorship of a new department of Dramatic Art to be founded at Yale. E. S. Harkness. Yale '97, has given $1,000,000 to the Fine Arts Department of Yale University to finance the new undertaking which will include the erection of a theatre to be used solely for the production of plays written under the auspices of the department.

To Head Dramatic Faculty

The Yale fund will provide a theatre and a distinguhed staff of dramatists and dramatic coaches who will give graduate and undergraduate instruction in the writing of plays their effective staging and their actual presentation Professor Baker leaves Harvard to accept the leadership of this staff.

In providing Professor Baker with these facilities Yale is giving him the same things that he struggled so long for at the University without success. Thirty six years ago he became a member of the faculty of the University and in 1905 he was made a full professor and given charge of the department of dramatic literature.

Received No Help From College

He has struggled along without the official assistance as well as his financial handicaps would permit him. He recruited his "Workshop Company from the students of Boston and Cambridge and has produced professional plays with a cast and mechanical staff composed entirely of amateurs. Every member of the "Workshop" was almost passionately devoted to "G. P." as he was called.

The fire in Massachusetts Hall last spring destroyed the only space in University Halls which the Workshop was permitted to occupy, so Professor Baker secured leave of absence from the University to spend a year on "sabbatical leave".

A rumor that he was about to resign was vehemently denied early in the fall, and at that time editorials appeared in several metropolitan dailies and in the CRIMSON, and communications were written to the CRIMSON picturing Professor Baker as a "Prophet without honor". Professor Baker announced his intention of resuming his work next fall, and all graduates and undergraduates were looking forward to a resumption of the "Workshop" at that time, when the announcement of his resignation came last night out of a clear sky