Word: harvard
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Dates: during 1950-1959
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...Spring of 1958, the Harvard community was shaken by a heated, often bitter discussion concerning the role that religion should play within the University. The controversy focused at once on charges of discriminatory practices regarding the use of Memorial Church, and more sensational charges of anti-semitism threatened to obscure the true issues. In a deeper sense, the central problem was whether or not Harvard as an institution should be committed to a particular religion, or indeed to religion at all. When one considers that Harvard was originally founded to prepare men for the Christian ministry, it became clear...
...supported, emerged from the confusion of accusations and defenses. On one side, it was reasoned that a university which includes members of many different religions should not officially embrace one to the exclusion of others; and some held further that it was not within the function of the contemporary Harvard to take any formal stand whatsoever concerning religion. The opponents of this view contended that commitment to religion necessitated the choosing of one, that just as a church can not be treated as a "cafeteria," as one professor described it, neither can Harvard be religious, abstractly, without carrying this belief...
...religion is formally removed from the College sphere, a crucial problem arises: namely, the moral education of the student. Among those most actively concerned with the implications of secularism at Harvard is President Pusey, who last June devoted his Baccalaureate address to the subject of moral philosophy at Harvard. Describing the history of this subject in American colleges and particularly at Harvard, he went on to discuss the position of moral concerns in the contemporary college...
President Pusey noted that the climax of a Harvard education was once a formal course in moral philosophy which constituted the main activity of the Senior year, and was taught by the President of the College. He described this course as "a comprehensive study of human nature, ranging over the whole field of physical, moral, and intellectual philosophy ... it dealt with the individual, the family, and the state; with law and freedom, with practical problems of economics and government, with property rights and slavery, and with questions posed in generation after generation concerning belief ... it never lost sight...
...almost-graduated Seniors may have found it strange and unfamiliar to hear a discussion of this sort at Harvard. The last time they had been addressed together, as newly arrived Freshmen, talk had centered around the practical problems of college life, such as the nature of the curriculum and the optimum participation in extra-curricular activities. Four years before they had heard very little talk of ethics or character, and since that time perhaps even less...