There are no requirements, no reports, and no checkups, and the only official group functions are the dinners, which help to further the exchange of different points of view from leaders in various unrelated fields.
The only other times when the organization assembles as a group are on Tuesdays and Friday when the Junior Fellows have informal luncheons. In the spring an annual picnic is held in Medfield, culminating in a softball game between the social scientists and the natural scientists.
Brinton notes happily that in the last couple of years the social scientists have won.
In their working time the Fellows do anything and everything. Even residency is not required. One Fellow is now in Japan, and another in Hong Kong. In their summers, Junior Fellows often travel to distant areas, such as Alaska or South America, for research. The Society makes available enough funds for any project a Junior Fellow can justify as legitimate--travel or otherwise. At the present time the largest stipend is being given to an experimentor in the psychology or rats.
Most of the Fellows work voluntarily in close contact with the Faculty, but one Fellow "never even saw a professor," in the words of Brinton. This "scandalized" some of the Senior Fellows, but since then the man has published several excellent books.
Both Cord Meyer and McGeorge Bundy spent much of their time while Fellows away from Cambridge, Meyer as leader of the United World Federalists, and Bundy as co-author of Henry L. Stimson's memoirs.
Only bright young men who have not yet reached 25 are eligible to become Junior Fellows. However, it is not a job any young man may apply for. One must be put up by another person and have the appropriate references, and both candidate and sponsor are interviewed before any Fellow is appointed.
During the war the Society was reduced to a group of less than ten, and all its leisure and ease stripped from it. The Navy was in Eliot House, and many of the Fellows had to teach.
It is not surprising that an overwhelming group of Fellows go on to positions on the Harvard Faculty, as much the same requirements are needed for both jobs. The competition for faculty appointments is keen. With three years to get acquainted with Harvard and the professors in the field, the Fellow has a great advantage over another candidate; the College too has had a very good chance to look over the Fellow and to know his capacity.
These Fellows are not bookworms, though. It is interesting to note that soundproofing had to be installed in the dining room to deaden the noise of the lively Monday night discussions. President Robert Sproul of the University of California is reported to have the loudest voice of the guests.
Four or five outsiders usually attend a dinner, but no matter how famous they are, they are not asked to give a formal talk, but only to chat informally with their neighbors.
The Society was a pet project of President Lowell's, and was founded by him and a group of four others, including Professor Alfred North Whitehead.
After several years of hunting for a sponsor, Lowell endowed it himself anonymously just before he retired in 1932, and left money in his will for its continuance. The first meeting was held on September 25, 1933.
Lowell said, "I do not wish to depreciate the Ph.D. but to diminish it as the sole road to teaching in an institution of higher learning. Nor do I wish to diminish the study for the Ph.D., bit to provide an alternative path more suited to the encouragement of the rare and independent genius." Hence, the only stipulation is that the man not receive a degree for any work done as a Fellow.
The present committee of Senior Fellows who are not necessarily former Junior Fellows, are mostly Harvard faculty members, including--besides Brinton--Arthur Darby Nock, Frothingham Professor of the History of Religion, ex-Junior Fellow, Harry T. Levin '33, professor of English, and Samuel Eliot Morison '08, Trumbull Professor of History.
Perhaps the best description of the organization is to say that it is no organization at all. The complete freedom offered the Fellows makes it impossible to characterize the Society's--there is no pattern except that it leaves the scholar alone to do whatever he wants, and to associate under gracious conditions with other scholars. As such it is unique in the country, and epitomizes the whole Harvard attitude toward education.