Zeph Stewart

Zeph's Stewart's special hope is that his forthcoming duties as Master of Lowell House will not reduce his involvement in Harvard University to an involvement solely in Harvard College. Mr. Stewart, a man who likes to keep several irons in the fire, sees the neglect of scholarship as the educational administrator's easiest, and yet possibly most dangerous error; for in his view an important task of a House (and its Master) is to keep the undergraduates aware of what life is like in the rest of the University.

Thus far in his career, Mr. Stewart has been remarkably successful in the delicate art of succeeding at some pursuits without excluding others-- and this is just the ability he hopes to be able to communicate to his students. At Yale, as an undergraduate in the period just before World War II, he demonstrated his capacity for doing several things at once by leading his class for three years, holding a job requiring ten to twelve hours' work each week, and serving as vice-chairman of the Yale Daily News. At Harvard, where he has studied and taught the Classics, first as a graduate student and now as a full professor, he has managed to combine rigorous professional scholarship with a variety of other enterprises--notably, work with the University library system, membership on the Faculty Committee on Educational Policy, and a one-year term as acting Master of Adams House.

Mr. Stewart's immediate plans for Lowell are based on the assumption that undergraduates do not spend quite so much time buried in their books as modern Harvard lore sometimes suggests. He considers the student of today to be a man of literary and artistic sophistication, and therefore a man sensitive to the physical appearance of the building he inhabits. Mr. Stewart would like to refurnish many of the Lowell suites, improve the lighting in the junior common room, and particularly, make some changes in the House dining hall. Believing that a House should be a place "in which persons doing and hearing things can do and hear them," he would like to emphasize the House's willingness to cater to undergraduate curiosity in cultural fields not included in the University's regular academic curriculum. (A favorite example of this sort of project is the movie-making venture of a group of Dunster residents last spring.) In Mr. Stewart's view, one of the most praiseworthy attributes of the House system is the speed with which the Houses can adapt to trends in undergraduate interests. He points out that a House can institute a seminar in sculpture or painting at few weeks' notice, while the University's reaction, though immensely bigger and better equipped, may take two or three years to appear.

From his undergraduate days, Mr. Stewart chiefly remembers the awesome approach of World War II and the controversy over the question of United States entry. The Yale Daily News, under a series of chairmen including Kingman Brewster, now dean of the Yale faculty, had taken an isolationist position. At the time when the controversy was greatest, Stewart was writing frequently for the News editorial page, and defending it in public. When the United States finally did enter the war, Stewart wrote a series of editorials suggesting ways in which the university could effectively mobilize for wartime service. Several of his proposals, among them the institution of a course in Japanese, were adopted.

The only point on which Mr. Stewart cares to compare Yale and Harvard is the image they present to the entering freshman. Yale, he feels, extends a more congenial welcome; Harvard, in spite of the efforts of the Deans' Office, has never quite succeeded in overcoming the uneasy sensation of "rushing about, competition, and a bit of impersonality."