1943
Harvard’s 308th academic year opens July 6 with an enrollment of 1,782 civilian students (rather than the normal 8,000) and nearly 6,000 army and navy trainees.
1953
The Harvard Corporation sets aside $250,000 from the Allston Burr bequest to begin construction of an outdoor ice rink and artificial ice plant on Soldiers Field. The Working Friends of Harvard Hockey, a group of alumni consisting mostly of former Harvard hockey players, plans to raise the estimated additional $350,000 necessary to put a roof on the rink and equip the building.
1958
Harvard’s brand new telephone center, handling calls from the University’s 1,700 stations, goes into operation.
1963
The University comptroller’s office shifts from a card-processing system to a card-and-magnetic-tape system that can add 200,000 eight-digit numbers a minute instead of 150.
1968
The editors report that no more than a dozen of Harvard’s 30-odd traveling-fellowship winners will actually be traveling, as a number of the would-be itinerant scholars “have been told no by their local draft boards.”
1978
Exiled Russian writer Alexander Solzhenitsyn is awarded an honorary degree at Commencement. That afternoon, in his speech to the meeting of the Associated Harvard Alumni, he warns his audience that “the Western world is losing its courage and spiritual direction.”
President Derek Bok tells the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that Congress must make clear that U.S. intelligence agencies cannot interfere as they please with university life, but must follow rules governing their activity. Harvard’s own guidelines are the first of their kind in the country.
1988
Harvard Business School has instituted a mandatory three-week, ungraded course in corporate responsibility and ethical issues for all entering M.B.A. students. “Decision Making and Ethical Values: An Introduction” is intended to signal early on that these issues are important to the school.
