Word: conant
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Dates: during 1930-1939
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...Resignations are threatened. Rumor and suspicion, bickering and ill-will are rampant throughout the entire faculty." Harvard's President James Bryant Conant read this disquieting outburst last week in the Harvard Progressive, leftist student monthly. The Progressive exaggerated, but Dr. Conant well knew that the Harvard family was in a quarrelsome mood...
...last few years, loud have been the critics-both faculty and student-about the way Dr. Conant handles men. One after another, popular young teachers have been fired, from Economics Instructors John Raymond Walsh and Alan R. Sweezy two years ago to Art Instructor Robin D. Feild last spring. Basic reason for the firings was a slump in Harvard's income from its investments, resulting in a tighter budget. But facultymen complained that President Conant was a budget autocrat, that he used a slide-rule formula in dealing out money to the various departments. Students grumbled because they believed...
...light of this, the Administration's action can be interpreted in two different ways. First, it is possible that Mr. Conant does not propose to carry out the intentions of the Committee of Eight, but plans permanently to hold the "middle group" at a lower level. Needless to say, this would add up to an incalculable injury to Harvard's educational facilities...
Second, Mr. Conant may intend to expand the ranks of the associate professors by the appropriate number sometime in the future. However, he would fill these new positions by new men coming up from below--men who are as yet lost in the maze of instructorships or who have not yet arrived at Harvard--instead of by choosing from among the ten assistant professors. Then in effect he is saying that he expects to find better men for these jobs in the future than he can find at present among...
Here again Mr. Conant's judgment must be criticized. Several of the ten who were fired showed extraordinary brilliance during their terms at Harvard. It is quite certain that better men will not turn up. It is even more certain that these assistant professors were not judged fairly, when it is considered that their departments were forced to recommend their dismissals--after the manner of the Walsh-Sweezy Case-- because there was no other possible expedient. All this is beside the point that they are leaving behind them gaping holes during the next four or five years, before...