Colleges

"I cannot say that Harvard's teachers are bigger, better, longer lasting, more glamorous or less irritating than those of our competitors. They don't wear more chrome, have longer fins, provide fewer calories or come equipped with more effective filters . . ."

As suavely as a coed angling for a date. Harvard's President Nathan Pusey last week fished his radio audience, then set the hook: "My commercial is simply this: if you care about higher education, you must care not only about students but also about teachers. The salary of the average college teacher in the U.S. last year was a little more than $6.000 ... It is time for America to buy a stronger teaching profession."

Thoughtful Uncertainty. Pusey's commercials punctuated an hour-long radio show, The Case for the College. The most ambitious attempt at alumni pocket-lightening made so far, it was part of "A Program for Harvard College" (TIME. Nov. 26, 1956), Harvard's plan for raising $82,500,000 (already in the kitty: $35 million). The broadcast was coast to coast in the U.S. on CBS, and--on the theory that the sun never sets on Harvard alumni--abroad on the armed forces radio network. Radio Luxembourg, the Voice of America, and various outlets in the Orient. But the nation's wealthiest educational institution was addressing an audience far larger than its own alumni. Manhattan Banker Alexander White, head Harvard fund raiser, stated the issue clearly: "Every American college is in serious financial trouble. Harvard is best off of all the colleges and Harvard is badly off. It is for you to decide--and then give to the college of your choice."

In a series of taped interviews with old grads and undergrads, Harvard backed up its sales talk with a broadly brushed portrait of what a college education should be: a progression from cocksure ignorance to--at least--thoughtful uncertainty. Reminisced Critic John Mason Brown ('23): "I came as thousands of others have, from the semidarkness of the subway into the blinding sunshine of Cambridge and Harvard and the Yard. I wanted to do something in connection with the theater. At Harvard they produced this one-act play of mine, and the minute I heard the first two lines spoken, I knew that Shakespeare and O'Neill were safe.'' Playwright Howard Lindsay spoke a pertinent line of Philosopher William James's (M.D., 1869): "The day when Harvard shall stamp a single hard and fast character upon her children will be that of her downfall. Our undisciplinables are our proudest product."

Uneasy Future. Onetime Harvard President James B. Conant offered a terse definition of a university ("a place where people ask questions"), and Harvardmen Charles Malik (Ph.D., '37), Foreign Minister of Lebanon, Senator John Kennedy ('40). and Defense Secretary Neil McElroy ('25) philosophized about Harvard. So did Author John Marquand ('15): "If you have ever been to Harvard, you will never be allowed to forget it. I have found that I can get on very well with most people until they discover this error in my past." Wearily superior. Music Man Leonard Bernstein ('39) recited:

Lonely, lonely men of Harvard, Set apart from all the rest; Isolated men of Harvard--All because we are the best.

McGeorge Bundy (Yale '40), dean of the faculty of arts and sciences at Harvard, reassured alumni--H and non-H-- who must pay for U.S. higher education: "Harvard today--with all American colleges--is committed more to the uneasy future than to the memorable past. And there is confidence here, a faith in the future of the human heart and mind."

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