Kermit Roosevelt's second article on President Conant and his university appears in the current Saturday Evening Post.
The story talks about the President's daily schedule, his contact with the undergraduate, his family, and the changes his administration has brought to Harvard.
(Last week's installment described Conant's early career, his appointment as President, and his wartime responsibility for a great part of the Atomic Energy program.)
"Harvard Has Changed"
Roosevelt says that "Harvard has changed tremendously in the last 15 or 20 years... To returning graduates the most startling feature of the Yard today will be the number of girls on it. If Conant were not to be remembered for anything else, he would go down in history as the President under whom coeducation came to Harvard."
The article describes the rise of "joint instruction"--"in his own course Conant has about a dozen Radcliffe girls... a Harvard man now serves on the Radcliffe News... the CRIMSON broke with 75-year old tradition last fall and opened its competitions to Radcliffe girls."
It also notes one dean's reply to attempts to differentiate "joint instruction" and co-education. "That is exactly like saying a girl is just a little bit pregnant. You've either got co-education or you haven't. And whether we like it or not, we've got it."
"How Can I Live?"
The President's busy academic life is detailed in Roosevelt's story. When coming to Harvard, Conant allegedly asked his doctor "how a man can be president of Harvard and live." The doctor set up a daily routine giving the president some leisure, but Conant's teaching commitments, writing, banquets, faculty meetings, and constant social functions have made the doctor's advice "far easier said than done."
One result of this schedule, according to Roosevelt, is that "it is still physically impossible for Conant to be anything but remote from large numbers of undergraduates... and faculty. Although he "attends annual dinners at the Houses... occasionally addresses student groups... meets regularly with a few top CRIMSON editors every two or three weeks... the fact remains that only one undergraduate out of a thousand has any contact with Conant."
"This complaint applies not only to the President but to his whole administration." The article cites the Student Council, "which could be said to exist largely for the purpose of complaining about things," as reporting that students are unhappy with the University "to the extent that they regard what they get as an 'empty education'--because it lacks the firm foundation of regular and intimate contact with the faculty."
General Education and the Social Relations department both pick up special attention in the article. "The General Education program was mapped out in... 1943... The courses have been criticized by many specialists as being too superficial and watered down to be of much value." Roosevelt also revives the story of Professors Bruner and Stouffer's November lecture before Soc. Rel. 1a, in which they ruled out any possibility of Truman's election. "They were just as wrong as Mr. Gallup."
Other sections of the article describe how Conant "has stepped on the toes of conservative alumni," quoting an Atlantic Monthly article of a few years back, entitled "Wanted: American Radicals," in which the President wrote "to prevent the growth of a caste system, (the American radical) will be resolute in his demands to confiscate... all property once a generation." Roosevelt says that "Conant has subsequently modified this statement considerably."
