Staying for More Than 50 Years

In 1946, having just been discharged from the military, Roger D. Fisher '43 returned to Harvard Yard and marched straight to University Hall.

Fisher, a student at Harvard during World War II, had come back to find official records of his graduation from the College.

"Did you ever get a diploma?" the woman at the reception desk asked him.

"No."

"Then you didn't graduate," she replied. She began to rummage through some papers.

"Wait a minute, what's your name? Fisher?" she asked, as she emerged carrying a dusty envelope.

Fisher had apparently not prepaid the postage correctly, so Harvard had not sent records of his graduation to him at his Army barracks. He finally received his diploma in University Hall in 1946, three years after completing his time at the College.

Fisher is now Williston professor of law emeritus, a pioneer in the field of negotiation, a legend at the Law School, and one of the several members of the class of 1943 who came back to teach at the University after graduating.

His experiences at Harvard, like those of most of his classmates, were largely shaped by the reality of war in the outside world. And as a professor here since 1956, he has witnessed great change at the University, both at the College and at the Law School, which he attended between 1946 and 1948.

"When I was there, the Law School was 100 percent male, now it's 40 percent female. It was about 97 percent white," he says. "We all wore coats and ties to class."

Frankfurter Professor of Law Abram Chayes '43 says, "We were quite a prissy lot...These days diversity is enormously enhanced."

Story Professor of Law Arthur T. von Mehren '43 says today's student body is more homogeneous in terms of intellectual ability.

Von Mehren says two distinct groups of students existed at the College in his time: one which came for the academics, and others "that were here primarily for family reasons." But today, he says, the groups have largely merged into one.

But while the student body that throngs to Harvard Square has changed, the geography remains the same. Superficially, things look different. In 1943, "there weren't as many street musicians" says Chayes. "And of course, there weren't the homeless--or twelve-year-old people with mohawks."

Yet Chayes says Harvard's environs have always been a "boiling vortex of activity, with young people predominant."

Back in 1943, however, the primary concern among Harvard students was the war. John L. Sosman '43, Medical School assistant professor of radiology, describes his senior year as a "confused one."

"Harvard went on a war-time footing," he says. "Many more people attended summer school and finished earlier." In contrast to today's undergraduates, who don't even have to take a swimming test, Sosman recalls students having to carry out heavy athletic tasks, since "too many of the people being inducted [into the military] were fish out of water."

And the war had farther-reaching consequences at the College. It defined the thought and political beliefs of the class of 1943 as well.

Von Mehren remembers a "very considerable diversity of political opinion," with people polarized on both sides of the war debate, before the attack on Pearl Harbor. "The Harvard Student Union was very divided in the summer of 1940," Fisher recalls.

But as America's formerly isolationist foreign policy changed, Harvard moved beyond its role as the nation's educational leader into international pre-eminence. With a greater international emphasis, the University prospered, Chayes says, into its now almost universally recognized position as the "premier institution for advanced learning in the world."

And left-wing opposition to entering the war, existent before Pearl Harbor, say the professors, virtually disintegrated after the attack.

"I wouldn't say we were radical radical," says Fisher, describing the political climate on campus at the time. "As many people were concerned with the Porcellian Club as with the Young Communist League."

And Chayes attempts to provide a reason. "In our time," he says, "everyone believed in the system, in one way or another. The system had won the war, beaten the Depression, and put us through law school." While there were differences among political parties, there were no fundamental challenges to the system.

Political opinion at Harvard has, in general, gravitated more to the left since 1943, but Chayes feels that the current campus climate is more conservative than it has been at times in the past. He feels that the perception of politically correct behavior on campuses today is overstated.

"I think the political correctness era was the late 1960s and early 1970s--not now," Chayes says.

While they say political sentiment on campus has fluctuated in the last fifty years, the professors feel the academic atmosphere at the University has improved, without exception.

And this forces the faculty to be able to adapt, and learn from past teaching experiences, Fisher says. He is convinced that such two-way interaction is essential for Harvard's continued success.

But if there has been one criticism of the College that has persisted through the decades, it is that the student-faculty ties could be improved.

"It's true that Harvard faculty don't go out and build buddy-buddy relationships with all students," says von Mehren, who nevertheless feels that, both in his time and now, "the students who were really intellectually committed had very good relations with faculty members."

Chayes cites the plethora of student activities and the strength of the Harvard faculty as reasons why "undergraduate life [today] is much richer intellectually."

"The students are very able," says Fisher. "We are not just casting pearls before swine."