Headlines from Harvard history

From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine

Illustration by Mark Steele

1911

The Bulletin notes that A Lawyer’s Recollections, by George Torrey, A.B. 1859, LL.B. 1861, reveals that in his day the only requirement for an LL.B. was that the candidate enter his name as a student at the Law School and pay his term fees.

1916

Newly planted elms in the College Yard are restoring greenness to a “blinding wilderness,” observes a Bulletin editorialist, applauding a decision to “check an increasing disturbance of the academic peace” by closing certain roads in the Yard against “the menace and noisiness of the automobile.”

1936

Dedication exercises for the Old Yard’s restored College pump are held, 35 years after it was blown up by a secret undergraduate society, the Med. Fac. Senior College alumnus Henry Munroe Rogers ’62 takes the first drink.

1946

Phi Beta Kappa poet W.H. Auden describes a university in which undergraduates with “nerves that never flinched at slaughter/Are shot to pieces by the shorter/Poems of Donne” and “Professors back from secret missions/Resume their proper eruditions,/Though some regret it.”

1976

The Adams House Raft Race draws more than 25 entries from Harvard, Radcliffe, and Cambridge public schools to the Charles. The Collegium Musicum’s craft finishes first, its crew singing as they paddle. (Many contestants sink early.)

1991

Under a consent decree, all eight Ivy League colleges agree to abandon shared guidelines for undergraduate financial aid, given a Justice Department contention that such cooperation violates antitrust laws.

2001

A 21-day “living-wage” sit-in at Massachusetts Hall, apparently the longest such protest in Harvard history to that date, ends on May 8, after negotiations in which the University agrees to freeze further outsourcing of jobs and accelerate a contract renegotiation with the union for its custodial workers.

Related topics

You might also like

A theatrical reenactment explores a 1976 clash between science and democracy.

In a sea of red brick, the Science Center and Peabody Terrace make their mark.

Until the 1950s, professionals cleaned up after students in the dorms.

Most popular

In her memoir All That's Unseen, Emilee Hackney explores religion, friendship, and home.

Tomiko Brown-Nagin has been named dean of Stanford’s Graduate School of Education.

Sheila Jasanoff has spent her career studying how societies produce knowledge, evaluate expertise, and make decisions about technology.

Explore More From Current Issue

Massachusetts Hall at Harvard Red brick building with a large clock on top, surrounded by green trees.

With a grade inflation vote and in the courts, the University argued that it’s taking steps to change.

An open book with a film strip emerging, trailing popcorn and a dancer silhouette.

Readers Respond to Our Adaptations Survey

We asked people to share their favorite art adaptations. Here’s what they said.

Vibrant urban scene at dusk featuring a mural on a building and illuminated structures.

The planned opening of the Goel Center in Allston for performances will be in spring of 2027.