Abbott Lawrence Lowell

For 24 years, Abbott Lawrence Lowell guided the destinies of Harvard University. That quarter-century followed the now legendary administration of Charles William Eliot, whose genius and labor transformed this institution from a relatively insignificant college to a leader in American education. President Lowell combined continued progress with the necessary stabilization and conservatism to place Harvard in the fore-front of the nation's universities. In re-emphasizing the college as the lifegiving core of the University, he raised academic standards, instituted the tutorial system and the teaching fellowships, the House plan and the integration of Freshmen. He instilled the mass of students with the will for scholastic achievement. His far-sighted financial planning protected the Harvard faculty from salary cuts during the great depression; he did not forget, as he pointed out, that in the Old Testament, seven lean years followed the seven fat ones. As a forward-looking citizen he championed the League of Nations. A capable administrator, he had an amazing ability to arrange details. The plan for the House system, figured down to the forks and spoons for the dining halls, was all ready when Edward S. Harkness stepped into his office one morning with the now-famous gift.

President Lowell refused to hop on the bandwagon which was heading for big-time football in the 1920's. Groups of alumni approached him with the proposition of floating a sizable bond issue to finance an enormous new Stadium. But financial acumen and antipathy to perverting sport for the sake of recreation to a money-making racket led him to turn down the suggestion, though the action earned many enemies for him.

Present-day undergraduates, if they remember him at all, know him as a stooped, gowned figure marching at the head of Commencement processions alongside of President Conant. They think of his name in connection with the House which bears it. But one of their most cherished possessions was protected and strengthened by his courage and wisdom: the untrammeled and uncensored teaching which they enjoy. In the years of the first World War and its immediate aftermath, academic freedom was under bitter and vicious attack from all quarters. But President Lowell was unbending in his declaration that: "We believe that if light enough is let in, the real relations of things will soon be seen, and that they can be seen in no other way." "In spite of the risk of injury to the institution, the objections to restraint upon what professors may say as citizens seem to me far greater than the harm done by leaving them free." Sentiments like those were only too rare in a country that seemed to be forgetting and forsaking the principles upon which it was waging war.

In the distance, the rumblings signifying the approach of a similar storm can be heard today. Under like circumstances, we may be faced with the battle which President Lowell fought and won. Profitting by his example, and aided by his victory, may we, too, take up the cause of "an unfettered search for truth," and defend that ideal against the attacks of those who cry for a vague "Americanism" at the expense of any other ideas or way of life.