Four Humanities Professors Deny Area's 'Snob Appeal'

A statement on the "antiquarianism and snob appeal" of the humanities included in President Conant's report for 1951-52 has aroused considerable controversy among the field's teaching staff and has drawn objections from four professors.

Two professors in English and two in Fine Arts took issue this week with certain portions of Conant's section on "The Role of the Humanities in a Technological Age."

In the section, Conant asks "less tearful hand wringing about the 'fate of the humanities'." He goes on to say, "Much of what passes for appreciation of the arts and letters in some circles is a combination of antiquarianism, a collector's instinct and the old snob appeal of a 'gentleman's education.' The academic people who pander to these tastes to my mind do a positive disservice to the humanistic tradition, which is in fact the tradition of the continuing triumphs of the creative human spirit."

Bush Criticism

Questioning Conant's assertion, John N. D. Bush, professor of English, said, "I cannot say that I recognize what Mr. Conant has in mind in dismissing attachment to antiquarianism and 'gentleman's education,' since I don't know where or by whom such aims are cherished. If exponents of the humanities ever indulge in 'hand wringing,' it is because of the pressure and frequently distorted values of a technological and positivistic age and the doctrine that there is only one kind of truth, the kind that can be verified in the laboratory."

Bush denied that "anyone conceived of the humanities as a battlefield for the cognoscenti." He added that "the study of the humanities requires knowledge of various kinds and involves differences of understanding as the sciences also do."

Frederick B. Deknatel, professor of Fine Arts, took issue with Conant's statement that "many of the younger members of the Harvard staff, particularly those interested in the General Education program," agree with his interpretation of the humanities. Deknatel argued that this statement seems to imply that older members of the staff disagree and are advocates of the antiquarian attitude. "It seems to me," eknatel said, "that the conception of the humanities as an expression of the creative human spirit is the attitude which most of the teachers of humanities are operating on here. It is certainly far more widespread than the younger members of the General Education Staff. There is really no antiquarianism at Harvard."

Argument "Weighted"

Harry Bober assistant professor of Fine Arts, termed Conant's argument "weighted." He explained that it is "unfortunate" to talk about the humanities "in terms of a practice long ago outmoded." The history of Art, he added, does not rely on a collector's instinct or snob appeal. "One would have to look very far for snob appeal in the humanities," he declared. "For the most part the humanities are concerned with the broadest human motivation and the history of ideas."

Howard Mumford Jones, professor of English, admitted that the attitude which Conant discusses is prevalent on the national scene, but said, "Teaching in the humanities at Harvard generally tries to avoid both the collector's point of view and the attitude of unenlightened scholarship."