Yesterday’s News

1917 — T.W. Lamont ’92, chairman of the Harvard Endowment Committee, announces a novel plan to raise $10 million for the permanent...

Illustration by Mark Steele

 

1917 — T.W. Lamont ’92, chairman of the Harvard Endowment Committee, announces a novel plan to raise $10 million for the permanent endowment by appealing, for the first time, to all alumni and to “believers in Harvard other than its own sons,” rather than to a limited number of wealthy benefactors.

 

1932 — The Graduate School of Education, with Carnegie Foundation funding, is trying to determine the value of mechanical aids in classrooms, including the use of “talking films” in junior high schools as a means of improving science instruction.

 

1947 — President Conant, in his annual report, advocates continuing federal support for professional training, especially in the sciences, but warns against any University connection in peacetime with “secret research or development.”

The Bulletin calls Harvard a bargain among prestigious schools in the Northeast, despite its “rich man’s college” reputation: it now costs a total of $494 a semester, compared to $502.50 at Princeton, $524.50 at Williams, $544.50 at Columbia, and $650 at Yale.

 

1962 —Some 200 Harvard and Radcliffe students join several thousand other undergraduates in picketing the White House, demanding a “Turn Toward Peace.” The Crimson complains that any worthwhile ideas that the students may have are being jeopardized by their tactic of mass protest.

 

1967 — As an experiment, Lamont Library will be open in the spring term to Radcliffe undergraduates and Harvard’s 650 women graduate students.

 

1972 — In his first annual report, President Derek Bok asserts that recent upheavals at Harvard have led to an unanticipated development—a heightened sensitivity among the University’s separate faculties to each other’s interests and problems. “However painful the circumstances,” he writes, “barriers were broken down in ways that will serve the University well in future years.”

 

1992 — Some 1,800 “shoppers” attend the first meeting of “Contemporary African-American Cinema,” offered by visiting lecturer in Afro-American studies Shelton J. (Spike) Lee. His enrollment limit for the course is 60.

Most popular

Harvard art historian Jennifer Roberts teaches the value of immersive attention

Teaching students the value of deceleration and immersive attention

How MAGA Went Mainstream at Harvard

Trump, TikTok, and the pandemic are reshaping Gen Z politics.

Shakespeare’s Greatest Rival

Without Christopher Marlowe, there might not have been a Bard.

Explore More From Current Issue

Catherine Zipf smiling, wearing striped shirt and dark sweater outdoors.

Preserving the History of Jim Crow Era Safe Havens

Architectural historian Catherine Zipf is building a database of Green Book sites.  

James Muller in white lab coat leaning on railing in hospital hallway.

Free Speech, the Bomb—and Donald Trump

A Harvard cardiologist on the unlikely alliances that shaped a global movement to prevent nuclear war

Man, standing in small group of people outside the courthouse, holding a sign that reads "HANDS OFF HARVARD" in red letters

Harvard’s Summer in Court

What Columbia’s settlement means for the University