University Outposts Stretch To All Corners of the Earth

The sun never sets on the Harvard Empire.

From South Africa to New Mexico the University owns property in many obscure spots or else has "permanent" research centers located in distant communities. The term "Harvard" has a local meaning to natives of Stratford-on-Avon, the Island of Yap in the Pacific, and the Pyramid region of Egypt.

The University's most famous overseas property is its astronomical observatory at Bleemfontein in South Africa, which surveys the southern skies for the University.

Harvard came to Africa over 20 years age after closing its southern observatory in Peru because the latter country's long cloudy season interfered with the station's photographing of the sky.

The staff at Bleemfontein keeps in fairly close touch with its parent body at Cambridge. Two or three times a year the South African group sends here a large batch of photographs it has taken.

In cooperation with the University of Colorado, Harvard also maintain a high altitude observatory at Climax, Colorado to study operations of the sun.

Recently the University added to its observatory facilities by founding a station near Las Cruses, New Mexico, to analyze meteors.

Two-Year Study

In recent years Yap, a small island southwest of Guam, has entered the Harvard sphere. Members of the Social Relations and Anthropology Departments are now completing a report based on their two-year study of the island.

The University's work laid special emphasis on the causes for a sharp decline in the population of Yap. Four major typhoons occurred while the study was going on, but this did not prevent the research crew from compiling a thorough analysis of the native culture with its age-grading custom and strict caste system.

In China the University has many tics due to the Harvard-Yenching Institute. Although the Institute is incorporated and is operated completely separately from the University, its American office is in Boylston Hall, and through the interchange of personnel the Institute keeps Harvard closely in touch with China.

In addition to underwriting the study of China's past at seven universities there, the Institute pays the expenses of Harvard's Far Eastern Department. That branch of the College's faculty frequently assists these seven Chinese schools with their problems.

Serge Elisseff, chairman of the Far Eastern Languages Department, also heads the Institute. He personifies the international qualities of Harvard, being a French citizen of Russian extraction living in America studying China.

Expeditions sent from the American School of Prehistoric Research located in the Peabody Museum, have been working in the northern part of North Africa analyzing the successions of cultures that preceded the known civilizations there.

For 40 years Harvard maintained a permanent expedition at the Pyramids in Egypt. Although the research center there was closed last year due to the completion of its permanent work. Harvard men are now leading an effort to establish an American Center for Near Eastern Research in Cairo.

Expedition Results

As a result of the expedition at the Pyramids the University has led the way in archeology in the Near East and has aided in the founding of archeological schools in Jerusalem and Bagdad.

Harvard owns and operates Harvard House in stratford-on-Avon in England. The House, which attracts many visitors, was the home of John Harvard's mother.

Closer to America is the Atkins Institution of the Arnold Arboretum in Cuba. Established in 1888, the station analyzes tropical plants which exist in a relatives dry climate.

All those heldings, when considered together with the number of foreign students at the University, make it clear that Harvard refuses to be limited to just one sentiment.