Headlines From Harvard’S History

Headlines from Harvard’s history

Illustration of football players hanging their laundry out to dry

Illustration by Mark Steele

1932

Herbert Hoover carries the College (1,211 votes) in the Crimson’s presidential poll. The Alumni Bulletin attributes Norman Thomas’s strong showing (484 to FDR’s 620) to “an extraordinary increase of independent thinking among the students.”

Harvard football candidates are now required to change their socks and underwear at least three times a week. Long hair and moustaches, coincidentally, are becoming passé for members of the team.

1947

President James Bryant Conant criticizes the Soviet Union for its unwillingness to agree to international control of the atomic bomb, which he characterizes as “a sword of Damocles hanging over our industrialized civilization.”

1952

Harvard begins its largest financial aid program, allocating almost $1 million in scholarships, loans, and jobs for more than one third of the undergraduate student body.

1967

Institute of Politics scholars studying the draft system recommend higher pay for draftees and enlistees, abolition of special deferments for students and teachers, and a lottery to determine “who should serve when not all serve.”

1972

The new Harvard Center for Research in Children’s Television, with administrative support from the Children’s Television workshop, will explore the effects of visual media on children.

1987

“Ambitious plans are afoot to wire the University for the information age,” the editors report. The Corporation has been asked to authorize a new network that will introduce, among other things, “state-of-the-art telephone service.”

1997

In accordance with Harvard’s non-discrimination policy, the University’s Board of Ministry recommends that same-sex blessing or commitment ceremonies be permitted in Memorial Church.

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.

Highlights From Harvard’S Past

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

Free Speech, the Bomb—And Donald Trump

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

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

How MAGA Went Mainstream at Harvard

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

Explore More From Current Issue

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?

Vivian W. Rong sitting on bench outdoors.

Highlighting Harvard Magazine’S Fellows

The 2025-2026 Ledecky and Summer Undergraduate Fellows

Nineteenth-century prison ruins with brick guardhouse surrounded by forest.

This Connecticut Mine Was Once a Prison

The underground Old New-Gate Prison quickly became “a school for crime.”