Harvard Irked

It was a little yellow pamphlet, but Harvard men saw red. The Next President of Harvard: A Prediction, said the title. The author was that suspicious creature, a pseudonymity; in this case, "Dolopathos," meaning "Suffering Slave," or as more cheerful souls who had forgotten their Greek translated, "Bad News." The publishers were S. Baldwin & Co. of Cambridge, a non-luminous fact. "Abbott Lawrence Lowell, President of Harvard," read the first sentence, "will be 70 years old on December 13 of this year." What axiom could be more harmless? "He has occupied his high office for 17 years, has accomplished many striking and notable changes in the life of the University, has donated ... a considerable part of his personal fortune. . . ." True, true. But then, ah, then came the sting. "The time is certainly not far distant," wrote the unmentionable one, "when he will tender his resignation and commence the enjoyment of a well-earned repose." Facts are all very well, but some facts simply are not discussed without provocation. Here, with Dr. Lowell in his vigorous prime, was no provocation. Harvard men raged--or chuckled--as the overweening one proceeded to anatomize the five Fellows of Harvard College who, with the Treasurer and President, would have the duty of electing Dr. Lowell's successor. Dolopathos concluded that a majority would fall in behind President Lowell in favor of a man "1) intellectually 'safe' and 2) financially capable. ... 1) a Harvard graduate, 2) socially presentable, 3) between 30 and 40 years old. . . . It would be a desideratum of course that he possess an independent competence." Financial capacity was explained: "Not ... a mere knack of handling the funds. ... A well-spoken speech may net only ten, where a word in the right ear will net a hundred thousand dollars or a new gymnasium." Intellectual "safety" was defined: "He must be devoid of all purely rational principles and ideas of any sort . . . cannot be a Roman Catholic, a Quaker, a Holy Roller. . . . Above all, he should understand how to befog issues wherein ideas perhaps lurk dangerously by raising and keeping raised a perfect dust storm of issues that really do not matter at all."

Three issues "in President Lowell's tenure" were cited as having been handled in hush: intellectual freedom of the faculty, exclusion of Jews and making Harvard "safe for the genteel."

Then, after a little snuffling among sham issues, three candidates to succeed Dr. Lowell were examined. First came large, gentle Dr. R. B. Merriman, "author of stately volumes on the Spanish Empire which few have read but all admire. Great Catholic-baiter. A man of means, whether his own or his wife's our sources do not inform us." But, questioned the scurrilous one, if Dr. Merriman were the Elisha of the University, why did Dr. Lowell delay resigning?

Less scurrilous was the examination of Dr. Clarence Cook Little, president of the University of Michigan. With murderous sarcasm Dr. Little was found competent in respect to his athletic, religious and social qualities, but wanting in that he is a biologist, a "loud" approver of birth control and one who had "publicly declared that compared to Oxford, Harvard wasn't so much. . . ." Besides, if Dr. Little was the chosen one, why had Dr. Lowell not yet resigned.

"There is some reason," said the sly one, nearing his game, "for sus- pecting that Mr. Lowell today is only keeping the presidential chair warm for someone who is a little too young to occupy it."

Then came an ingeniously crucifying brief for one E. A. Whitney,, Harvard '17, onetime Crimson (undergraduate daily) president, assistant professor in the History Department. Mr. Whitney was shown to have all the requisite negative virtues, to be "on terms of intimacy with all recent graduates who are likely to be able to give money ... on some sort of terms with nearly every recent graduate, except perhaps purely domestic Jews and Irish." Mr. Whitney was pictured, in a study made illustrious by the late Barrett Wendell, as an "electric person" to whom all manner of Harvard officials, from the President down, enter for weighty conference or valued advice. Of Mr. Whitney the pamphleteer cried: "What meteoric rise is this! . . . All the requisites but age, and President Lowell does not resign!"

While the Harvard Crimson passed the matter off with flippancy to hide its real concern, others fell to figuring out who the pamphleteer might be. It seemed obvious that his name did not matter, but that (by internal evidence) he was 1) a socially unsuccessful classmate of Mr. Whitney's; 2) someone with a grudge, albeit a gay one, for the Harvard history department; 3) an intimate of the secretaries and other underlings of Harvard officials; 4) a clever Jew with a nose for the sensational.