A few weeks ago a Professor of Philosophy rose from behind the dais at a House dinner to address the assembled undergraduates and faculty members. "The price of freedom," he said, "is loneliness."

The members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, comprising a community of scholars, has long advocated the virtue of freedom as almost all important. But far from being able to lead an unhampered and isolated life, a member of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences has a growing number of commitments and responsibilities of a very this worldly nature. The life of the Harvard scholar is a complex series of stresses and strains between the scholar, teacher, administrator, member of Harvard, and citizen of the nation.

As the Chairman of one Department wryly commented, "Democracy takes an enormous amount of time." There are faculty meetings and committee meetings, interviews and investigations, secretaries and societies, communities and politics.

But the two major demands upon the professor came from his students and from his field. This is the classic tension or balance between the teacher and the scholar. Harvard has maintained since 1636 that the best scholar is the best teacher. Harvard was founded "to advance learning and perpetutate it to posterity."

The best known recent statement on this duality at Harvard came in 1939 from the President's Committee of Eight, "The University educates men for fulness of life and for usefulness in the world. It is at the same time a seat of learning, established for the advancement of learning...."

On a structural level, the duality can be seen in the Graduate Schools which are primarily concerned with preparing scholars and the college which is chiefly preparing men for the world. But neither the faculty nor the students have ever been convinced that the balance between the graduate level and the undergraduate, between the scholar and the teacher, is a comfortable one.

"In spite of the official University claim that a 'delicate balance exists between the University and the College, we have not found this balance..." the Student Council reported in 1948.

Even the idealistic Committee of Eight report dryly noted, "Between teaching and scholarship there is in principle no conflict whatever.... But the actual schedule of teaching may interfere." They do not really come to grips with the problem of office hours, living in Houses, eating with students, or even meeting students.

In March of 1956 a faculty Committee said that ideally a professor should spend half of his time on teaching and half on advancement of learning. It noted "this ideal seems distant and unreal to many..."

While the faculty complains about demands on its time and admits that teaching is an important part of its job, students see an aspect of the problem when they learn that the professor who has been bored and boring in a lecture course is the leading scholar in his field.

For the student with an alert and critical mind, the ideal professor is the scholar who can teach. For such a student will demand an instructor who is at the forefront of the field, and who considers the field a live one. There are, however, very few Kittridge's at Harvard now, or at any time. There are very few professors who give brilliant lectures in the morning, write penetrating essays in the evening, and give friendly dinners on Sunday afternoons.

The average professor, indeed, is as apt to have a deliberate policy of avoiding undergraduates as of cultivating their friendships. The undergraduate is, from a faculty point of view, often a burden. As the Behavioral Sciences Report noted in 1954, "Harvard's effort to bring individual instruction to the undergraduate through a tutorial system (recently revised) puts another large burden on the faculty.

Pressure Towards Scholarship

And yet the Harvard faculty will admit in survey after survey that it is less burdened at Harvard than at any other University. Although the faculty is keenly aware that it has a duty to teach and although many have a desire to teach, the pressure towards scholarship mingled with the feeling that "true scholarship admits no distractions" hinders teaching as opposed to scholarship.

By training and by belief, the Professor thinks in terms of scholarship. His rise to tenure was part of a highly competitive system entitled "publish or perish." And even with tenure, the pressure to publish is increased as more is expected of him. While upper level courses, particularly those in the Graduate Schools might stimuate the professor or even help him, there are few professors who feel that College level lecturing is an important aid to their scholarship.