Corporation, as Last Court of Appeal, Decides Vital Problems of University

When the John Reed Society and the Committee to Save Harvard Education were simultaneously turned down by the Corporation on Monday, they were stymied by what is in effect the University's highest court of appeal.

Although the decisions of the Corporation are technically subject to the approval of the Board of Overseers, an annually elected body of alumni, since 1689 the Board has almost never wielded its legal vote power.

"Owners and Managers"

Popularly known as the Corporation, the self-perpetuating body of seven men, who constitute the President and Fellows of Harvard College, has been described by John Hayes Gardiner, Harvard historian, as "the owners and managers of the University in trust for the community."

The word "fellow" itself is derived from a Medieval English word meaning "holder of property." The President and Fellows hold Harvard's vast and far-flung empire, formulate the University's financial and educational policies, and alone can choose or oust a President.

Present Corporation

Two corporation lawyers, a doctor, a broker, a financier, and an "author and trustee," together with President Conant, make up the present Corporation.

The lawyers are Grenville Clark '03, and Charles Allerton Coolidge '17. Roger Irving Lee '02, Henry K. Oliver Professor of Hygiene at Harvard from 1919 to 1924, is the physician. William Henry Claflin '15, a broker and antiquarian, is the present Treasurer. Senior Fellow and big-time business man is Henry Lee Shattuck '01. Henry James '99, author of "Charles W. Eliot", Pulitzer Prize biography in 1930, completes the roll.

The Harvard Corporation has not always been "a board of trustees connected with the living organism of the University only through the President," as Samuel Eliot Morison, professor of History and official Harvard historian, describes it.

Until 1717 the Corporation consisted of all the tutors in the college. In that year the Fellows elected three settled ministers, omitted two tutors. Three years later Tutors Sever, Robie, and Flint petitioned the Board of Overseers for their election as Fellows.

In the ensuing battle royal President Leverett carried the day for those who wanted a "board of external trustees", and the tutors were left out in the cold.

Since 1784, when John Lowell '60, business man and first of the Harvard-Lowell dynasty, was appointed to the Corporation, the Fellows have been mainly wealthy doctors, lawyers, and business men of Boston (and later New York).