TOWARD A NEW HARVARD

The American educational world will read with interest the document which the CRIMSON publishes this morning. For this is the inaugural of a Harvard president, wisely delayed until he could survey with care a university whose administration was little familiar to him.

President Conant opens his report by repeating the text of his speech last Thursday night, that Harvard's aim is "to advance learning and perpetuate it to posterity." But his assumption that "we can all agree that these admirable words still describe our aims" is an entirely gratuitous one. These may be the aims of Harvard University, but they are not the aims of Harvard College. Men shape institutions in their own image and it is clear that Mr. Conant envisions the Harvard of the future as a paradise for those rare creative scholars of whom he is one. It is a noble aim, but if Harvard is to remain a college as well as a university it cannot be the only aim. The great bulk of undergraduates who are not creative scholars do not come here solely to be infused with "a passionate interest in the growth of human knowledge." For since they are never themselves to contribute to that growth, their function would be purely passive. They are here to receive an intellectual training which will enable them better to cope with the problems of society. It is a noteworthy fact that nowhere in his report does Mr. Conant so much as mention the responsibilities of a university in training the leaders of society.

But passing over this inadequacy in the report, the reader cannot but rejoice that Harvard's new president has definite objectives and that he is apparently ready to further them with energy and vision. During President Lowell's regime, the development of new educational methods held the center of the Harvard stage. The system of concentration and distribution, the tutorial system, and the House Plan, one by one took their places in the scheme of education. But it is men and not methods which loom largest in the mind of President Conant. "Harvard's success," he says, "will depend almost entirely on our ability to procure men of the highest calibre for our student body and for our faculty. . . . If we fail in this regard there are no educational panaceas which will restore Harvard to its position of leadership."

To many undergraduates the suspicion that Mr. Conant thinks of the tutorial system as nothing but an "educational panacea" will offer small grounds for acclaim. But there are few who will deny the clear implication of the report that Harvard stands in need of better material for her faculty. Harvard's faculty today contains too many men who are neither great teachers nor great scholars. The figures whose names once made the University Catalogue read like the roster of a national academy of learning, are fading rapidly into the past, and their successors do not fall gracefully into the heroic molds. The Department of Philosophy is but the most notorious example of a department whose glories lie chiefly in the past. The causes of Harvard's failure to attract many of the best men are not easy to diagnose, but whatever they may be, the undergraduates will wish Mr. Conant success in his quest for a more lustrous faculty.

With regard to the student body, Mr. Conant's efforts will be directed, first, to attracting the finest minds to Harvard, and, secondly, to making it possible for them to study here whatever their financial circumstances may be. In fulfilling the first objective he will probably rely on the presence of a brilliant faculty and on an impending campaign to sell Harvard to the country by means of intensive publicity. To accomplish the second objective, he presents in his report a plan for regrouping the scholarship funds, awarding a portion of the scholarships for two or three years, and establishing a number of fellowships carrying a heavy stipend for entering Freshmen. The CRIMSON must postpone detailed comment on these proposals until a later issue, but it may be said at once that their purpose is a very laudable one and the only difficulties ones of practicability.

In the light of Mr. Conant's first report, it is apparent that two chief problems will engage his attention in the immediate future. One is that of guaranteeing Harvard's position of leadership by drawing to Cambridge the greatest scholars in America. The other is that of so allotting the University's large but nevertheless limited endowment as to make possible the attainment of his first objective.