Dean Hanford Resigns This Month After Two Decades of Promoting Respect for Learning

After the longest tenure as Dean of the College in the past century, A. Chester Hanford retires from University Hall this month to take up the teaching of state and local politics where he left off in 1927.

At first comparatively unknown to undergraduates at large and, as he admits, by no means certain of his ability to cope with the busy job of "doaning", Dean Hanford has been able, from his position as middleman between students and Faculty, to strengthen "respect for scholarship" in the former and to increase the effective energy of the latter.

President Lowell, in reporting the resignation of Dean Hanford's prodecessor. Chester Noyes Greenough '98, pointed out that the "office is very exacting and requires tact, skill, and constructive imagination in a rare degree."

Personal Concern for Students

A hint of the "tact" and "skill" Dean Hanford used in his personal relations with wayward students was reported in the Alumni Bulletin in 1942:

"One morning not long ago he called a friend of ours to say that lying awake in the night he had suddenly solved a bad one which might easily have handicapped an undergraduate for the rest of his life. It was quite characteristic of him to take his worries home for self-inflicted insomnia."

Having accepted a job about which he insists he knew nothing, Dean Hanford has demonstrated "constructive imagination"--as one may discover in reviewing and comparing the Annual Reports of the President and of the Dean--in encouraging students to take an active part in improving all phases of College life.

Council Constant Advisor

The Student Council particularly has established for itself a tradition of important service as an investigating and advisory group. In Dean Hanford's own words: "The Council has played a significant part in every important development in Harvard College over the last quarter century, from the first official proposal of the House plan down to the discussion in the Faculty regarding the A.B. and S.B.

"It has been my policy. . . to regard the Council officers as if they were Faculty colleagues and to lay before them all proposed changes of policy affecting the educational or social life of the undergraduate."

Several Council men and CRIMSON editors engaged on such Faculty projects have in fact later become assistant deans themselves.

Highpoints in Dean's Career

Landmarks in Dean Hanford's term of two decades include:

1927: Reading periods instituted to give men in more advanced courses opportunity for more independent study.

1928-29: Dean Hanford backs up recommendations of Council for setting up a system of individual undergraduate Houses first envisioned in the Council's 1926 Report on Education.

1930: Having noted the consistently poor Freshman grades, Dean Hanford successfully advocates Board of Freshman Advisors. Recommends that Council provide for representation by new House units.

1931: Dean Hanford has position of Dean of Freshmen made permanent in campaign to improve first-year scholarship. Lists Council Report of Tutorial system as one of the five major events of the year. Council provides for House representation by appointment.

Scholarship Plan Outlined

1932-33: With the help of Council reports, Dean Hanford supports a program of scholarships based on 1) incentives to scholarly achievement and 2) financial help in proportion to need. Recommends reduction in number of hour exams.

1934: New language requirements for the bachelor's degree instituted as Dean Hanford loses first attempt (with President Conant) to regularize the traditional A.B.-S.B. distinction.

1935: With Freshman grades and honors graduates well on the upswing, Dean Hanford points to CRIMSON Confidential Guide to Freshman Courses as example of student help in academic activities, Dudley Hall made social center for commuters unable to participate in the House system.

1936: National Scholarship plan (partly implemented by Assistant Dean Bender's research) goes into effect on lines laid out previously by Dean Hanford and Student Council recommendations. 1) Awards made regardless of need; 2) Money given according to need.

1938: President Conant in his annual report says: "The Student Council's success has been due both to the calibre of the men elected and to the sustained interest of Dean Hanford in every endeavor in which the Council has embarked."

Sets Up Emergency Schedule

1939: Council's Report on Education in cooperation with the Faculty Committee on Broader Studies marks the beginning of the General Education program. Dean Hanford uses words "mad competition" and "parasites" to describe tutoring school situation in Square. Faculty action and publishers' law suits precipitated by CRIMSON campaign and Council reports. Bureau of Supervisors set up to provide legitimate study help.

1941-43: Accelerated emergency program and three-term calendar set up for the duration.

1946: A.B.-S.B. degree distinctions and Classics requirement abolished with Deans Hanford and Buck sponsoring Council report of student opinion.

On the day his resignation was accepted by the Board of Overseers last November, Dean Hanford commented in an interview, "I have had a lot of fun as Dean, but I think 20 years is long enough and the time has come for a younger man."

His term was six years longer than that of Dean Byron S. Hurlbut '87.

Returns as Government Professor

Looking forward to his return to active teaching which he left as an assistant professor in 1927, he has recalled that he hasn't "read any book in the last 20 years besides detective stories and the General Education Report."

To be of full professorial ranking when he returns to the teaching staff next Fall, Dean Hanford expects to do "some research, writing and teaching in state and local government, an important field which has been neglected at Harvard in recent years, and also to take on additional tutorial instruction in which I have been almost continually engaged since 1917."

A native of Illinois and a member of the class of '12 at the University of Illinois, Dean Hanford came east originally in the capacity of an investigator of state constitutional government. Appointed as an instructor in 1916, he received his Ph.D. here in 1923.

Interprets "Liberal Arts"

In Dean Hanford's view according to his 1942 report, the object of a liberal arts education is to "furnish students with an idea of the accumulated culture and experience of the human race, show them the continuity of the present with the past, and provide them with some understanding of the complicated world in which they live."

Its ultimate purpose, he says, is "to free the minds of its students from ignorance and prejudice, to provide them with a set of values and standards, and to furnish them with the tools which will enable them to form intelligent opinions, judge wisely, and make sagacious decisions."

Wilbur J. Bender is New Dean

Wilbur J. Bender '27, who is to succeed Dean Hanford this month as Dean of the College, has been Counsellor for Veterans here since his discharge from the Navy in 1945.

A Midwesterner by birth like Dean Hanford, he earned his college education by teaching grade school and by working as a railroad hand. He studied for two years at Goshen College, Indiana, transferring to Harvard and graduating at the age of 24.

His educational career since graduation has been divided between Phillips Andover Academy and the College, Dean Bender having been particularly active under Dean Hanford a dozen years ago in the creation of the National Scholarship program.