Yale hates Harvard; Harvard doesn't care

If, at my death, my executors, or more properly my creditors, find any precious MSS in my desk, men here I prospectively ascribe all the honor and the glory to whaling, for a whaleship was my Yale College and my Harvard. Herman Melville Moby Dick. 1851

Long before the first proverbial pig was skinned for athletic use. Harvard and Yale had been hoped together in friendly rivalry in baseball crew. But even before sports became the official channel for intramural hatred, the two schools had developed a friendly loathing between them. It is in their institutional roots.

John Harvard, an Englishman converted to Puritanism, sailed to the Massachusetts Bay Colony in 1637 to preach his belief. He died a year later "of a consumption" and left 400 books and $800 to a recently formed school in the American Cambridge.

It turns out that Harvard sailed on the same boat with Edward Hopkins, the uncle of Elihu Yale, a man who did a similar favor for a struggling New Haven college in 1718. Never mind the differences in the patron saints--Harvard was a stern religious man while Yale, the governor of Madras, used his official position to reap a fortune in the diamond trade and sent his wife off to England alone while he lived with a Portuguese mistress

Yale was established largely out of concern that the 65-year-old Massachusetts school was slipping and nine out of 10 ministers were Harvard graduates. The competition was set from the beginning and the incessant comparison has lasted nearly three centuries.

Charles Franklin Thwing (Harvard Class of 1876) once said about the two institutions that "Harvard stands as the mother of movements, and Yale as the mother of men." That epithet best sums up the comparative images from the colonial days through the Derek C. Bok-A. Bartlett Giamatti era. The older school pioneers educational reform, the younger cares about who it's educating, or so the perception goes.

Indeed, even looking at the histories through blue tinted lenses, one can hardly dispute the first half of the axiom. George W. Pierson has been affiliated with Yale since his 1922 graduation, and he is currently its Larned Professor of History emeritus. His-not-completely unbiased two-volume examination of his school's history from 1871 to 1937 consistently portrays the sons of Eli as vascillating on reforms, adhering to the traditional values until another institution, usually Harvard, paved the way.

It was Harvard, for example, that scrapped its Latin and Greek requirements in the late 19th century--over the vociferous objections of Yale administrators; Yale followed 30 years later. Harvard, Princeton and Columbia had all adopted honors programs before Yale complied in 1913. Harvard has drawn national attention for major curriculum reforms--the General Education programs of the 1940s, and the Core Curriculum repudiation of Gen Ed in the 1970s. Yale currently has a specialized gen ed program.

But the episode most indicative of the relative progressive nature of the two schools is the decision to establish the House Plan at Harvard in 1928, followed shortly by the Residential College system at Yale. Edward S. Harkness (Yale Class of 1897) first proposed the mini-college idea to his alma mater in 1926, and promised the necessary funds. He met with agonizing debate and indecision. Two years later he was frustrated enough to make a jaunt up to Cambridge to offer a similar proposal to President A. Lawrence Lowell (Harvard Class of 1877). "It took Mr. Lowell about 10 seconds to accept," writes Samuel Eliot Morrison in his Three Centuries of Harvard. The next April, Yale finally accepted a similar plan, and Harkness funded that one as well.

The defense raised by New Haven loyalists is that Harvard has railroaded through changes for prestige, ignoring the concerns of its charges. Sure, they say, Charles William Eliot, who ruled Harvard with an iron fist for 40 years past the turn of the century, succeeded in transcending a small school into the preeminent university in the world. But it was at the expense of the College. At Yale, they insist, the University has been built up around the college, and undergraduates receive primary attention.

Today, recipients of Yale B.A.s will probably has seen more tenured professors and fewer lecture halls than their Harvard counterparts. They will also have taken more courses--36, compared to 32

This "Harvard may be better, but Yale students better" line goes back a long way. When Harvard philosopher George Santayana took a road trip for the 15 version of The Game, he left with some sobering comparisons.

Similarly, Santayana observed that Yale was more "American" In fact, throughout its first two centuries. Yale had a more geographic diversity. The less affluent New Haven had no equivalent of the Boston Brahmin and hence was less status conscious. It was hardly a Jacksonian democracy, but it was more open than Harvard. Sociologist David Riesman (Harvard '33) describes the differences during his undergraduate days, writing that at Yale, membership in secret societies was based on personal characteristics, but "at Harvard, it was ascribed not achieved. No matter how much of a lout you were you could get in a final club [with connections]. There wasn't anything you could do by effort."

...Yale is in many respects what Harvard used to be. It has maintained the traditions of a New England college more faithfully. Anyone visiting the two colleges would think Yale by far the older institution. The past of America makes itself felt there in many subtle ways: there is a kind of colonial self-reliance, and simplicity of aim, a touch of non-conformist separation from the great ideas and movements of the world.

The more-populist image has persisted even in recent years. During the turmoil of the late '60s, Harvard President Nathan M. Pusey '28 sent club-wielding cops into University Hall to end the student takeover. Yale head Kingman Brewster avoided violence by stating at a press conference that Black Panthers probably could nto get a fair trial in the United States. Current Harvard President Bok has a reputation for distance from the undergraduates and political priggishness. Giamatti holds office hours and has publically denounced the Moral Majority.

A Gnat that had been buzzing about the head of the Bull, at length settling himself down upon his horn, begged his pardon for incommoding him, "but if," says he, "my weight at all inconveniences you, pray say so and I will be off in a moment." "Oh, never trouble your hand about that," says the Bull, "for 'tis all to me whether you go or stay; and, to say the truth. I did not know you were there."

The smaller the Mind the Greater the Conceit.  an 1848 English version of Esop's Fables

While Yale may actually edge out Harvard in the unqualifiable category of "undergraduate life," the key question in analyzing the rivalry is whether anyone at Harvard cares. In a true competition, both sides must possess or embody something desired by the other, and both sides must care. In the Harvard-Yale rivalry, Harvard does most of the possessing, and Yale does most of the caring.

By almost any academic yardstick available--though any such numerical comparison is crude--Harvard fares much better than Yale. A study conducted by the Conference Board of Associated Research Council recently assessed the "reputations" of faculty members in 32 fields. Harvard had 22 departments rank in the top 10, Yale 17.

Similar results emerge when examining the relative contributions to American leadership. In the 97th Congress, 44 senators and representatives have studied in Cambridge, 23 in New Haven. Six American Presidents did time at Harvard, two at Yale (although both had special distinctions--William Howard Taft, a College graduate, was the largest President, Gerald R. Ford of the Law School, was the only unelected one).

To the general populace, it would seem that no rivalry existed whatsoever. The Reader's Guide to Periodicals for March 1982 to February 1983 listed 20 articles in the press about Harvard, and only six about Yale. To be convinced that one school captures the popular imagination than another, one need only note Hollywood's preoccupation--Love Story. A Small Circle of Friends. The Last Convertible. The Paper Chase--have all centered on life along the Charles. A Yale spokesman recently could not recall a single full-length movie about his school, but countered that "Love Story was written at Yale, and there were several Yale names in it even though it took place at Harvard." He added that "in Bedtime for Bonzo [starring Ronald Reagan, who went to Eureka], the monkey in the end gets smart enough to go to Yale."

In admissions, Harvard traditionally gets more than 12,000 applicants, while Yale draws under 10,000. Of those accepted by the older school, about 75 percent enroll, compared to 60 percent for the younger. Yale's claim to democracy and diversity has waned, considering that minorities make up about 15 percent of its undergraduate body, compared with 22 percent at Harvard. Of those accepted at both institutions, about 300 each year go to Harvard, 100 to Yale.

Perhaps the most interesting admissions statistic, however, is in the results of a survey taken in 1982 of Harvard and Yale members of the Class of '57. The alums were asked "if you had to do it over again," where would they have gone to college. Of the Yale graduates, 78 percent said they would return to Yale, 6 percent said they would rather have gone to Harvard. Of the Harvard men, 38 percent would have done the same thing, none would have gone to Yale.

What this indicates as much as anything is how one-sided the so-called rivalry really is. Pierson's volume on merely 50 years of Yale history lists in its index almost 70 references to Harvard, and more than 40 under the category Yale-Harvard comparisons. Morison's 300-year overview makes a scant 15 mentions of Yale. It is quite easy, in discussing Harvard, to ignore Yale.

It is almost impossible to think about Yale without drooling Harvard.

Which is why the rivalry, such as it is, usually highlighted in terms of football. That is one area where in recent years. Yale has clearly excelled. While one might expect athletics at an academically elite institution to play only a minor role. Yale apologists have insisted that their school's success reflects its characters: "Harvard men might win the one-man competitions, but the team competitions went regularly and decisively to Yale," writes Pierson.

Entering the 100th gridiron battle between these 200-year-old rivals, Harvard is 5-2-2 and in contention for the League title. Yale is suffering through its worst season ever with a record of 1-8.

No matter what happens in The Game itself, Yale will be worse than Harvard at football. And what will make that devastating blow more crushing will be that no one at Harvard will care.

Presidents

6 Harvard graduates

2 Yale graduates

97th Congress

44 Harvard graduates

23 Yale graduates

Poll of the Class of '57

"If you had it to do over again, where would you go to college?"

Harvard Class of '57

Harvard: 88 percent

Yale: 0 percent

Yale Class of '57

Yale: 78 percent

Harvard: 6 percent