Pusey Says University Maintains Old Concern for 'Humane Learning'

President Pusey said in his annual report that the University's involvement in science, research, and graduate and professional education has not diminished its "ancient concern for humane learning."

Although there is today a great deal more outside aid to the sciences than to other disciplines, Pusey reported Harvard has been able to maintain the balance among the various fields of learning with the help of private support.

But he warned, as he has in other statements on federal aid to education, that "for the long-range health of our universities one can hope that individuals in positions of power in the federal government who seem now to be on fire to advance only the special missions of health, defense, and space, will develop greater awareness of the basic importance of education, especially higher education, and with it, a broader understanding of its full reach, and of the importance of its many varieties."

A Deliberate Fostering

While discussing the University's scientific achievements during the past year, Pusey offered evidence that Harvard is "deliberately fostering and rigorously maintaining" the humanities and social sciences:

* a study made here a year and a half ago revealed as great a budgetary increase in various departments of literature, history, the fine arts, and music as in any others;

* a majority of the 78 new chairs established during the past nine years are in the humanities and social sciences;

* new physical facilities have been acquired for the study and practice of the drama and arts--namely, the Loeb Theatre and the Visual Arts Center--and more library space has been granted for music, Oriental languages and literatures, German and French, the fine arts, the Law School, and the Divinity School.

Two Centers Open

And if 1961-62 saw the beginning of operation of the Cambridge Electron Accelerator and the new computing center, it also witnessed the opening of the Center for Hellenic Studies in Washington, D.C., and the center for Italian Renaissance culture at I Tatti. Pusey also noted that the largest single building effort the University has yet undertaken, the William James Hall, will soon provide a new home for the departments of Social Relations and Psychology.

"So it does not seem to me justified--certainly not in regard to Harvard--hastily to conclude that the present dramatic advances in the natural sciences are being effected at the expense of the humanities and social sciences, or that these disciplines are now suffering indifference and neglect," Pusey commented.