Word: conant
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...Government was not slow to accept Conant's offer. By the fall of 1942 over 3,000 Armed Forces personnel were already taking courses at the University. As the number of civilian students continued to decline, it became increasingly clear that a wartime Harvard education was going to differ markedly in its external trappings, if not in its scholastic content, from that offered in peacetime...
This concept of the "roving professor" originated more than 20 years ago with President Conant. He first mentioned his views in the President's Report for 1933-34--his second annual presidential report. Writing about "methods of counteracting the centrifugal forces which tend to separate our faculties into an ever-in-creasing number of sub-divisions," he claimed that the University should "emphasize those programs of teaching and research which cut across the conventional boundaries...
...means to this end Conant suggested that "we need a certain number of university professors with roving commissions whose teaching and creative work shall not be hampered by departmental considerations. Such professors without portfolio would have to be recruited from scholars who had already proved their worth not only as productive thinkers but as stimulating personalities. The endowment of their chairs should include an adequate research fund which could be spent for assistants or for publications as the incumbent in each case directed...
...Conant discussed the idea again, before the Harvard Club of New York the same month that his original proposal appeared. Again he emphasized the importance of the inter-departmental, intellectual cross-fertilization, of getting "university-minded men" to help counteract the divisive effect of Harvard's size, of commissioning "outstanding scholars who would be free to roam about the entire university...
...this time, Conant knew just what he wanted. But before he could do anything about it, he had to raise enough endowment funds to pay for the salaries, to provide research facilities, and to meet all the other costs of each professorship. It was a slow, long process...