Headlines From Harvard History, November-December 1913-1988

From the pages of the Harvard Alumni Bulletin and Harvard Magazine

1913 

Capping a 9-0 football season—with Harvard scoring a total 215 points to their opponents’ 21—the Crimson achieves its first victory (15-5) over the Elis in the 10-year-old Harvard Stadium.

1943 

A Bulletin editorial laments that “Too many boys…are coming to Harvard and other American colleges…woefully unprepared in speaking and writing ” English, and praises English A’s remedial courses for their important wartime role.

1958 

Plans are complete for an extension of Leverett House, which has given Mather Hall [renamed Old Quincy, and now Stone Hall] to Quincy House. For the first time, the University will build high: two 12-story glass-and-limestone towers will house 280 students.

After a letter in the Crimson reports that some landlords registered with the Harvard Housing Office refuse to rent to blacks, the office draws up a pledge of nondiscrimination that all landlords using its services must sign.

Three faculty members spend three weeks in Russia trying unsuccessfully to visit the Soviet space program’s computing center. Astronomer Fred Whipple remarks that the Russian rocketry program is definitely military, and being pushed at an enormous pace. Allen Hynek, associate director of the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory, comments: “The United States may be losing the race for scientific supremacy because Americans are more interested in prosperity than posterity.”

1973 

The Yale Band, playing at halftime during Yale’s game against Cornell, forms an H on the field to honor the victims of President Richard Nixon’s “Saturday night massacre”—Archibald Cox ’34, LL.B. ’37; Elliot Richardson ’41, LL.B. ’44, and William Ruckelshaus, LL.B. ’60.

1988 

The University’s Association of Black Faculty and Administrators calls for an affirmative-action plan to ensure that black, Hispanic, and Native Americans comprise 10 percent of Harvard faculties by 1990, the centennial of the College graduation year of W.E.B. Du Bois, who later became Harvard’s first black Ph.D. recipient.

You might also like

In Sermon, Garber Urges Harvard Community to ‘Defend and Protect’ Institutions

Harvard’s president uses traditional Memorial Church address to encourage divergent views.

Free Speech, the Bomb—And Donald Trump

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

Highlights From Harvard’S Past

The Medical School goes coed, University poet wins Nobel Prize. 

Most popular

Two Years of Doxxing at Harvard

What happens when students are publicly named and shamed for their views?

A New Narrative of Civil Rights

Political philosopher Brandon Terry’s vision of racial progress

Paolo Pasco and the Art of Making Crosswords

Paolo Pasco and the art of making crosswords

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.  

Illustration of college students running under a large red "MAGA" hat while others look on with some skeptisim.

How MAGA Went Mainstream at Harvard

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

Student walking under bright stage lights shaped like smartphones displaying social media apps.

Two Years of Doxxing at Harvard

What happens when students are publicly named and shamed for their views?