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

Harvard Releases Database of 1,613 People Enslaved by University Affiliates

Research continues to track down living descendants.

250 Years Ago, Harvard Was Home to a Revolution

A look at the sights, sounds, and characters that put the University on the frontlines of history

The Woman Who Penned the Case for War

Mercy Otis Warren’s poetry and plays incited the Patriot movement.

Most popular

Harvard Faculty Approve a Cap on A Grades

Reforms to reduce grade inflation will take effect in the fall of 2027.

Harvard Discloses Top Earners’ Compensation

The University files its annual report for tax-exempt organizations.

AI Outperforms Doctors in Emergency Room Tasks, New Harvard Study Shows

Researchers say the technology could help physicians with triage, diagnosis.

Explore More From Current Issue

Alene Anello smiling surrounded by four chickens in a natural outdoor setting.

This Harvard-Trained Lawyer Fights for the Rights of Chickens

Alene Anello wants to apply animal cruelty laws to birds raised for meat.

Four stylized magnifying glasses arranged in a gradient background with abstract patterns.

AI Hunts For Stolen Harvard Coins

A museum curator and a computer scientist track down ancient coins taken in a legendary heist.

Woman with long hair, smiling, wearing a black sweater, in a textured beige background.

For This Poet, AI is a Writing Partner

Sasha Stiles trained a chatbot on her manuscripts. Now, her poems rewrite themselves.