Parry Helped Found College in Nigeria

The appointment of John H. Parry as next year's Acting Master of Dunster House was a moderate surprise--Parry came to Harvard from Great Britain to become Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs only six months ago.

Parry, however, is no stranger to either Harvard or the House system. In 1936-37, as a candidate for a PhD. from Cambridge, he spent a year at Harvard as a Henry Fellow. He lived in Eliot House and rowed with the House crew.

He returned to Harvard in 1954 for a year as visiting professor of History, and this fall came back again to teach and renew his old association with Eliot House.

He accepted the appointment because he "wanted to get back to the books" after having been a college administrator for ten years. Part of that time was spent in Africa, where Parry had much to do with the orderly preparation for British withdrawal from Nigeria.

In 1950 the British government had decided to establish universities based on the English model in its colonies as part of a program to prepare them for independence. Parry explains that many British educators like himself were invited by the government to participate. He became an administrator and teacher at University College of the West Indies. After his year at Harvard, Parry was asked by the British government to transfer to Nigeria where he helped to set up University College in Ibadan, Nigeria.

As principal of what is now "the largest university in Black Africa, the University of Ibadan," Parry helped to create in Africa a university similar in many respects to Cambridge. He recalls that "we drove the students hard and they took their studies very seriously." Admission was competitive--only about 15% of the applicants were accepted. "We set out to catch the ablest boys, since the courses we designed were every bit as hard as those at Harvard or Cambridge."

However, Parry explains that the students at Ibadan did not pose the same revolutionary threat to colonial or "imperialist" regimes that many university students in underdeveloped countries do today. The enrollment was limited to those few whom the facilities could easily accommodate, and "we could not afford to admit hangers-on or professional agitators who would disregard their studies," he explains.

He attributes the recent overthrow of the government in Nigeria to tribal jealousies and popular impatience with the nation's politicians. Parry contends that the Nigerians had become convinced that their leaders were concerned more with self-aggrandizement than with solving the country's problems.

But Parry does not think that the new regime will institute any radical changes. "My son, who works for an oil company in West Africa, says that life has changed little in Nigeria since the revolt--the professional administrators and civil servants still run the country," he relates.

Although Parry is interested in the politics of the underdeveloped nations and has even paid a visit or two to the Center for International Affairs to confer with some of its associates, he devotes most of his time to the study of colonial empires in the 17th and 18th centuries, particularly maritime history.

As Acting Master, however, Parry will not immerse himself in scholarly pursuits to the exclusion of all contacts with undergraduates in the House. No one should expect him to learn the name, school, and summer activity of everyone in Dunster House. But there is good reason to expect that he will be accessible to undergraduates in both the dining hall and junior common room, for he believes in "frequent, constant, informal conversation with the students." He said yesterday that "it is right that the university should be a place for the meeting of minds--on all levels," and he praised the Harvard House system as "a means to insure that undergraduates achieve maximum contact with senior Faculty members.

Parry's life will change in vital respect next year. For the first time since 1960, when he went to the University of Wales as principal of University College in Swansea, he will be living in the city. Parry is especially fond of the rural life--his favorite non-academic pastimes are sailing, fishing, and bird-watching--and he admits that "the saddest thing about leaving Wales was losing that salmon stream that flowed by my doorstep." He will, however, retain his house in Harvard, Mass., about 30 miles west of Cambridge, and continue to spend vacations, summers, and some weekends there.

Aside from his preference for rural living, Parry is almost euphoric about his return to Harvard. He describes the Harvard community as "very pleasant, perhaps the greatest concentration of interesting people anywhere in the universe." Parry finds only one major deficiency in the Harvard educational process--he thinks that Harvard students, particularly freshmen and sophomores in his course, History 174, "do not express themselves clearly or briefly enough." American secondary schools and colleges, he explained, do not give their students enough practice, drill, and criticism in expository writing.

Parry observes that Harvard's most laudable feature is "its close network of informal contacts, the ease with which people of all grades of seniority mix." This may or may not be true, but next year's Acting Master should be able not just to encourage such contact, but through his accessibility and experience share in it