Harvard and Yale in China

The Game symbolizes Harvard-Yale competition, a competition carried on, however, more on the academic than the athletic level. The competition is all the greater, perhaps, since differences between the two institutions are relatively slight.

Harvard and Yale do differ significantly, however, in one little-known corner of university work. Both schools support Chinese studies, by means of the Harvard-Yenching Institute and Yale-in-China. But in its origins and current policies, Yale-in-China draws upon a concept of education quite distinct from that utilized by the Harvard-Yenching Institute.

Late 19th-century missionary fervor provided the impetus for Yale-in-China. Established immediately before the 1900 Boxer Rebellion, this school was, according to Supreme Court Justice William O. Douglas, "a work through which the bright conscience and warm heart of America could shine in splendor." Religious interest played a much less important role when Harvard-Yenching was established in 1928. According to its charter, it exists "to conduct and provide research, instruction and publication in the culture of China..."In accordance with these aims, the Harvard-Yenching Institute has concentrated upon advancing Chinese scholarship-not upon training doctors or school teachers, as Yale-in-China has tended to do.

Education Replaces Religion

Americans first became interested in China during the 1830's, at which time scores of Congregational ministers began to propagate the Gospel there. "For two generations, the Americans tried to save souls," John King Fair-bank '29, Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History points out wryly, "then they turned to education." Several Christian colleges were established and, in 1879, the first American chair in Chinese instruction was established at Harvard.

Yale-in-China represented a leading example of United States educational magnanimity. It its campus in Changsha, a town in Hunan (a province in Central China south of the Yangtze), New Haven-trained B.A.'s and graduate students taught English, teaching techniques, medicine, and other subjects.

Financing came through the Yale-in-China Association and through income from the modest endowment, which now totals approximately $800,000. Reports from Changsha still reflected some of the early missionary enthusiasm that led to the Association's formation, while the "Bachelors" program, through which two graduating seniors spent a year in East Asia, similarly demonstrated the vigorous, somewhat idealistic, and somewhat elementary Yale approach. Yale-in-China intentionally did not and still does not favor advanced studies of China exclusively; it tries to raise Chinese standards by diffusing education and improving medical practice.

A Different Approach

On all this, Harvard has adopted different approaches. Instead of establishing a special college, Harvard affiliated with the leading Chinese school, Yenching University. Instead of emphasizing humanitarianism, it emphasized the humanities. And, most important, instead of relying largely upon annual gifts from alumni and friends, the University received a single large bequest making establishment of the Harvard-Yenching Institute possible.

Aluminium magnate Charles M. Hall died in 1914, willing his fortune to advance education in Japan, continental Asia, Turkey, and the Balkans. Ten years later, the Dean of the Business School, Wallace B. Donham, approached the trustees of the estate, suggesting that Harvard would be an ideal agent to improve Oriental scholarship. Donham succeeded, and with a $6.35 million endowment from the Hall funds, helped found the Harvard-Yenching Institute in January, 1928.

Funds for Libraries

In Cambridge, funds have been used to build up the finest East Asian library outside of Asia itself, and to improve graduate education. In 1927, the University's Chinese-Japanese Library included 5,694 books, a figure which was tripled six months after the establishment of the Institute in 1928. Nearly 75,000 books were on hand July 1, 1932; at the present time, the Chinese-Japanese Library (housed for the last two years in a new, fire-proof wing at 2 Divinity Ave.), owns more than 350,000 volumes. Endowment income annually brings about 15 or 16 young Chinese, Japanese, or Korean professors to Cambridge.

Until the Communists gained control of mainland China, Peking provided the second focal point for scholarship. A center for graduate study and research was established at Yenching University, to which the Institute contributed funds for salaries, library facilities, and publications. Work continued from 1928 until the bombing of Pearl Harbor, at which time hundreds of the Yenching faculty and students fled to the western provinces. For a brief interlude at the end of the war, scholarly activity resumed. The Communist regime abolished the school in 1949, however, and the campus became the Liberal Arts college of the National Peking University.

Yale-in-China suffered a similar fate. A Communist edict closed the school at Changsha, and the trustees of the Yale-in-China Association cast about for a new way to improve East Asian education. In 1953, they decided to support New Asia College, a school set up in Hong Kong by refugee scholars. The Western-style approach to learning has been continued. Its full-time staff of 42 members teaches standard subjects, and in currently planning to create a Faculty of Science. In cooperation with other Hong Kong schools, New Asia College is also attempting to strengthen its Chinese studies, an effort for which it receives funds from both Harvard and Yale. The Yale-in-China Association gave New Asia College $53,349 in direct and indirect grants during the last fiscal year, the Harvard-Yenching Institute a much smaller amount. Chinese History and Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute since 1956, is currently touring East Asia to expand the Institute's financial assistance beyond aid to schools. Early this month, he attended the first international conference of scholars in East Asian studies, a meeting held in Yaipei to coordinate the activities of the Korean, Japanese Research Councils supported by the Harvard-Yenching Institute.

Displaced from their original homes in Peking and Changsha, Harvard and Yale educators have nevertheless continued to aid Chinese education. Their different approaches still remain manifest, however. Harvard-Yenching spends several hundred thousand dollars annually to exchange knowledge of Chinese culture, by means of research in East Asia and Cambridge; Yale-in-China spends less than one hundred thousand dollars spreading Western knowledge through China, but assisting a school in Hong Kong. The competition between Cambridge and New Haven may be all the more fierce with the similarity of the two universities. In the little-known area of East Asian education, however, Harvard has eschewed the missionary-inspired, undergraduate-oriented Yale approach