Pusey’s a Legacy of Prosperity, Turmoil

Nathan M. Pusey ’28 was a traditionalist who led Harvard to reap the benefits of the peace and prosperity of the 1950s. But traditionalism gave way to paternalistic inflexibility as his administration ended amidst the violent climax of student protest in the turbulent 1960s.

During his tenure Pusey spearheaded the University’s first major fundraising campaign, led major modern campus construction initiatives and solidified Harvard’s commitment to meritocratic admissions and appointments.

A strong opponent of McCarthyism, Pusey is credited with upholding Harvard’s dedication to academic freedom in the face of blacklists and allegations of treason.

But Pusey’s last years as president were characterized by the political turmoil and student activism of the 1960s, a fact that friends and observers call unfortunate.

He is most often remembered for his controversial decision in 1969 to use police to evict occupying students from University Hall. Less than two years later, Pusey had stepped down and University President Derek C. Bok had assumed the seat of power.

Pusey arrived at Harvard in 1953 at a moment observers describe as ideal for his set of talents. Succeeding James B. Conant ’14, Pusey’s goal would be to solidify many of the gains that the Conant had accomplished.

Upon arrival, one of Pusey’s first priorities was to put the University’s recently expanded programs and research activities on a more solid financial base.

At the time, Pusey’s solution was the most ambitious and successful fundraising effort in the history of higher education.

Pusey aimed to raise over $82 million for the University’s various schools.

“Pusey comes off as a cautious man but he was not cautious when it came to the campaign,” Harvard historian John T. Bethell says. “He went for a number that was seen as absolutely ridiculous.”

Where Conant had been the public figure, weighing in on national policy debate and ultimately taking time off from Harvard to work on the Manhattan project, Pusey used the bully pulpit to press for the campaign. Pusey roamed the country pitching “the case for Harvard,” even making a national television appearance.

The campaign surpassed expectations, and under Pusey, Harvard’s endowment surged from $304 million to more than $1 billion. According Bok, Pusey set the standard for other universities’ financial planning for years to come.

At Harvard, all of the schools benefited, but, owing largely to Pusey’s background as a devout Episcopalian, the Divinity School won big—increased funding propelled it to new heights.

With a professional career spent nearly entirely at small liberal arts colleges, undergraduates and teaching were among Pusey’s prime concerns. But according to former Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky, the greatest progress came in assuring Harvard’s place as one of the premier research universities. “Harvard moved forward more as a research university under Pusey than under any other president,” Rosovsky says.

Under Pusey, the University endowed more professorships than under any previous president. It increased financial aid and realized its goal of a regionally diverse university, secured by scholarships like the one that had brought Pusey himself to Harvard in 1924.

Unlike his predecessor and successor, who instituted and refined the General Education and Core curricula respectively, Pusey did not introduce sweeping change to College academics.

He did take the first tenuous steps to a merger between Harvard and Radcliffe, put emphasis on more stringent academic standards and pushed for a greater role for religion at the College.

But Pusey’s lasting legacy was his commitment to meritocracy in admissions and faculty appointments, Brandeis University historian and Harvard expert Morton Keller says.

“He made possible the meritocratic University Conant envisioned,” Keller says.

Pusey also left his fingerprints on Harvard’s actual campus. The Science Center, the towers of Leverett House, Mather House, Peabody Terrace, Holyoke Center and William James Hall are only the most noticeable physical additions that Pusey planned and funded.

Even during the 1950s, Pusey’s efforts were not without significant bumps.

According to Keller, in 1957, as Pusey’s admissions policies were rooting out the last vestiges of anti-Semitism, he was roundly criticized for barring a Jewish wedding from Memorial Church.

But the real troubles came later on.

Despite the physical reminders of Pusey’s tenure, it is the last year and a half of his time as president—when the wave of student protest swept over Harvard—that Bethell, Rosovsky and others say Pusey is remembered for.

“He’ll be remembered most for ’69—its very unfortunate and unfair,” Keller says.

According to Keller, Pusey himself acknowledged that he had nearly 16 “wonderful years” and “one terrible one.”

Observers say Pusey’s personality, combined with a yawning generational gap, exacerbated the troubles of his final years.

“The 1960s were very difficult for him,” Rosovsky says. “He was unprepared for it, but so was everyone else.”

Generational gulfs always exist between the administration and the students, Keller says, but with Pusey the gulf grew steadily as the decade of the 1960s went on.

Bethell agrees that the generational gap was important. “It was very hard for Pusey to understand where the [Students for a Democratic Society] members were coming from,” he says.

“He came from Iowa and had confidence in his midwestern idea of America. He couldn’t believe we could be involved in an unjust war,” Bethell says. “Pusey got locked into defending the war, even as the Faculty and his deans around him opposed it.”

On the flip side, students couldn’t understand Pusey’s position. And his characteristic strong will didn’t help things—“when he said no, he meant no. He was perhaps too inflexible,” Bethel says.

The result was the fiery conclusion of the 1969 sit-in in which the police evicted SDS occupiers. Even more vicious was the backlash—deans were critical and students said their president had lost all connection to their concerns.

Pusey had once attended a plethora of Harvard sporting events, and had stayed on generally good terms with students as late as the mid-1960s, Bethell says. Three years later students were spitting in his face.

In the 30 years between his departure and his death yesterday, Pusey remained unapologetic. “The students just talked about the brutality of that thing,” Pusey told The Crimson last year. “But the cops were well behaved for the most part. Students jumped out of the windows. That wasn’t the cops’ fault.”

Pusey said he forgave the student occupiers, but still spoke critically of the faculty members who supported them.

Rosovsky says that he felt like Pusey opened up late in his life, and probably thought better of his actions in later years, even if he refused to admit it. “I’m sure that if he had had the experience, known what he knew later, he would have acted differently,” Rosovsky said.

—Catherine E. Shoichet contributed to the reporting of this story.

—Staff Writer David H. Gellis can be reached at gellis@fas.harvard.edu.