The Dynamic Pinstripe

"Sam Beer is one of the truly great teachers around here," said a section man in Social Sciences II. "Other men may publish more than he does, but when it comes to getting students to understand written material--and that's what a teacher is supposed to do--they don't come better than Beer. He's the kind of man who becomes a living legend." By building his courses around student interests and his own enthusiastic ideas, Beer has built a reputation as a man intensely concerned with his course material. And, of course, his students find it equally absorbing.

Even his appearance contributes to the growing Beer legend. A mustache of heroic proportions soften a pleasantly booming voice. Clothed either in a brown, chalk-striped, business suit, or a black pin-striped number, many think that he looks like an intellectual mob-chief of the twenties.

His gestures are well known. In his smaller courses, he stalks about the lectern, keeping time to the fast pace of his words with his whole body. But in Social Sciences II, an enrollment of over 650 students chains him to a microphone, and reduces him to wild movement with his hands. Gauging the relative importance of his remarks is easy. An idea emphasized by a gentle wave means little, but anything accompanied by a fist brought up from the floor with a twisting motion is liable to be on the examination.

Some think that Beer's constant body movement is an echo of days on the boxing team at Michigan. While an undergraduate he majored in History and Philosophy, winning a Rhodes scholarship to Balliol College, Oxford, in 1932. Majoring in History, he took first honors there in 1935, and returned to the U. S. with his wife, Roberta, whom he met at Michigan and married in England.

He then went to work for the Democratic National Committee, writing speeches under Cochran and Cohen. "I was a sort of a sub-ghost," he explains. "I wrote some things for Roosevelt, but none of them were flamboyant phrases that everyone remembers. In fact, I opposed the 'rendezvous with destiny' speech, because it seemed pretty corny."

One night, after reading Lincoln Steffens' auto-biography, he told his wife that he was tired of ghosting, and was going to New York to land Steffens' old job as police reporter for the Post. He went to New York the next day, and when he returned to Washington that night he had a new job.

After a year with the Post and nine months with Fortune, Beer came to Harvard at the suggestion of William Yandell Elliott, and stayed until 1942 when he enlisted in the Army. Reporting to Camp Devens the day after he took a special examination on his doctoral dissertation, he went to OCS, and emerged a lieutenant in the Anti-Aircraft Artillery. He returned to Harvard when discharged late in 1945 and began teaching Social Sciences II as his first course.

Fondly he speaks of these early days, almost with regret that popularity has made his first course a mammoth production, complete with public address system. "The section men used to meet in a side room at Jim's Place, but now the staff is too big, so we have to hold formal meetings." A former student, now a section man, matters in terms first learned in the course, that "dynamic institutions contain the seeds of their own destruction."

But Beer does not let the problems of academic success stunt his vigorous activity in other directions. Now working on a comparison of British political parties, he has just finished a long introduction to a book by Karl Manheim on political sociology.

Politically he is active on behalf of every Democrat but himself. A member of the Executive Board of the Massachusetts ADA, and chairman of its Political Action Committee, he firmly declares himself not eligible for office. He wants to stick with teaching.