The revolution is as yet far from completed. It has actually just begun to roll.
* * *
But is this really a good thing? How close to the University can alumni get before they start to dictate its educational policies? Is the current alumni revolution just what books like God and Man at Yale are pleading for when they urge that alumni return to the campus, use their financial power to dictate educational policy to the administration, and thus purge the faculty by "kicking out all the dirty Reds"?
Maybe President Eliot was right in his policy of calling alumni "the society of educated men" but nonetheless keeping them at arm's length from Massachusetts Hall. During the period that Eliot was instituting such great reforms as the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and the free elective system, according to Morison, "If at any time...his policies had been referred to a plebiscite of Harvard alumni, they would surely have been reversed."
Alumni Plebiscite?
If the current trends in alumni affairs are permitted to continue, will such a plebiscite soon be possible?
In short, is there a danger that the alumni body's growing role in the operation and policy of the College will bring an infringement of academic freedom?
A glance at Harvard history would suggest that there is. Virtually every President of the University has had to rebuff alumni who tried to use their financial power to control educational policy. In 1650 Dunster faced attempts to purge the Yard of "antipaedobaptism." Leverett in 1717 was threatened for his "secularism." Eliot in 1885 encountered an organized alumni campaign to block the free elective system. Lowell in 1916 was attacked for the presence on the Faculty of pro-German professors. Conant's mail was constantly enlivened by letters such as that received in 1935 from Alexander Lincoln, Jr. '32, who pointed out that "My Class this year celebrated its fortieth anniversary and an overwhelming majority of its members...are utterly opposed to the New Deal and all its work." Lincoln then drew the logical conclusion.
In all these historical examples, groups of alumni have attempted to direct the University's policy into "reactionary" channels. They have failed simply because their influence over the Administration was not strong enough.
Yet now the President of the University, already a veteran recipient of threatening protests, is himself taking the lead in drawing the alumni closer to the College and, in fact, giving them more influence over the Administration. Is this not just what the "crackpots" want?
Pusey's policy is undeniably a bold one. It is not, however, as suicidal as it may seem.
The President is apparently counting on the assumption that the "unenlightened" policies cited above are no longer typical of the alumni body as a whole. He is confident that the revolution of the past two decades has indeed transformed the