March-April 2005 > John Harvard's Journal

Yesterday's News

Yesterday's News

From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine

1920 The Corporation and Overseers have voted to admit female students to the new Graduate School of Education, which will open its doors in September.

 

1925 Following a review of the freshman year, the faculty creates a Board of Advisors to counsel first-year students and approves plans for the College’s first freshman orientation, a three-day session to be held before classes begin in the fall.

 

1930 A "prohibition poll" by the Crimson of the College and the law, business, and medical schools reveals that 2,678 of the respondents favor modification or repeal of the existing law, 529 want it strictly enforced, and only 67 like the status quo.

 

1935 President Conant proposes creating an endowment fund to maintain Harvard’s athletic program because the Depression has reduced football ticket sales — which finance all other sports.

 

Illustration by Mark Steele

1940 Professor of zoology Alfred S. Romer gets a long-distance phone call from the Hollywood studio filming 1,000,000 B.C., inquiring about the kind of fighting noises a tyrannosaurus and dimetrodon would make.

 

1945 The Corporation votes to open Nieman Fellowships to female journalists.

 

1955 Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences McGeorge Bundy tells a Senate subcommittee that Harvard refuses to do secret work in peacetime because classified-research contracts can easily contaminate the essential atmosphere of a university.

 

1965 Following the lead of Columbia students, Harvard students organize a seven-hour "teach-in" on Vietnam, with 100 faculty speakers and attendance approaching 10,000.

 

1975 Harvard Medical School and the Monsanto Company have joined forces in a 12-year, $23-million project in basic biological research, "the base for a totally new field — biologic-industrial technology."

 

1980 The Faculty of Arts and Sciences votes to legitimize drama as part of the undergraduate curriculum, authorizing a faculty committee to approve courses and recommend lecturers from the recently arrived American Repertory Theatre.

 

1985 An estimated 5,000 people meet in Tercentenary Theatre on April 4 to hear the Reverend Jesse Jackson call on Harvard and other institutions to divest their holdings in companies doing business in apartheid South Africa.