President Lowell was concerned about about the obvious inconvenience of the existing living arrangements, but he was far more disturbed by the general tendency of students to isolate themselves in stereotype economic and social groups. All the Greater Boston prep school boys were living in one little cluster, all the Cambridge and Boston Latin School boys in another, all the midwestern farm boys in another, and so on. Before making any changes in living arrangements, Lowell wanted to be sure any changes would help to break up and discourage these overly homogeneous groups.

"The key to many of our college problems would seem to lie in the establishment of a series of Freshman dormitories with dining halls," he wrote in 1910. "This... would give far greater opportunity for men from different schools and from different parts of the country to mix together and find their natural affinities unfettered by the associations of early education, of locality and of wealth; and above all it would tend to make the college more truly national in spirit."

Freshmen Halls Give Little Help

Although a total of eight new halls for freshmen were built in the next 15 years, only five of these had attached dining halls (these halls were later converted to Houses), and none of them seemed to achieve the socio-economic sifting Lowell had envisioned. The housing situation had improved somewhat by the late twenties, but was not really very different from what it had been in 1910.

Then the unexpected happened. One day late in 1928, Edward S.Harkness, Yale '97, walked into Lowell's office and offered him $3 million to build an "Honors College," with a resident master and tutors, for members of the three upper classes. Because Yale had spurned Harkness's offer, Harvard became the fortunate recipient.

Lowell not only accepted the offer, but announced it immediately to the Governing Board who in turn were so enthusiastic that Harkness decided to increase his gift to $10 million, thereby providing for seven Houses. Three of these were to be built entirely new, the other four from existing freshmen houses by the River.

Surprisingly enough, undergraduates were generally displeased with the plan. The "clubbies" and "Gold Coasters" reputedly shuddered at the thought of mixing with the majority; the CRIMSON attacked the proposal as arbitrary and disrupting; the students living in the Yard feared such a change would leave them disoriented.

Lowell Liked Controversy

Lowell's regime brought reform to both the housing and the academic programs for undergraduates. But despite his preoccupation with College reform, Lowell never forgot the University's relationship to the "outside world." The same conviction which made him fight to restore an atmosphere of intellectual excitement within the College, made him fight to keep the University in close contact with the "outside." Above all, he believed that complacency could lead an institution only to decay. Lowell, who liked some controversy because it kept issues alive and people alert, wanted to make Harvard not an ingrown "ivory tower," but a lively and intelligent force in contemporary America.

At times this position seemed risky; often it was nearly untenable. But Lowell always maintained it, and especially so after 1919 when he published his now-classic interpretation of academic freedom. In the middle of the Boston police strike of that year, Harold J. Laski, a young government instructor at the University, became somewhat carried away with his own enthusiasm in addressing the striking policemen's wives. Exuberantly, Laski praised the uprising as an example of pluralistic liberty in the finest tradition.

He had hardly finished when conservative Bostonians rose in protest, denouncing him as a traitor and a Bolshevik, accusing the University of supporting the strike and mob rule, (Harvard had actually sent about 200 students to help fill temporary gaps in the force) and demanding that Laski be immediately removed from his instructorship.

Upholds Academic Freedom

Brooking severest criticism, Lowell adamantly refused to remove Laski. "Knowledge can advance... only by means of an unfettered search for truth on the part of those who devote their lives to seeking it...," he said "and by complete freedom in imparting... the truth that they have found. Either the University assumes full responsibility for permitting its professors to express certain opinions in public, or it assumes no responsibility whatsoever, and leaves them to be dealt with like other citizens by the public authorities." The University steered always by the latter course under President Lowell and consequently left its faculty free to say whatever they wished, provided they did so as independent citizens rather than representatives of the University.

"At a time when discussion was being muzzled and the free expression of opinion stifled in many American universities," Morison had said in discussing the Laski incident, the Lowell Administration "acted so as to make every member of the teaching faculties feel that he could teach, write, and say what he believed to be the truth, with due regard to decency in utterance and appropriateness in occasion. No reasonable man could breath the air of Harvard at this time and not feel free."

Society of Fellows

Lowell's last innovation was the Society of Fellows, finally established just before he resigned in 1932-33. Ostensibly the Society was different from his earlier projects because it involved only a small and academically exclusive group instead of all the undergraduates or all the faculties. But fundamentally, it was designed for the same purpose as the other academic reforms--to recreate intellectual excitement in the College.

In his report to the faculty for 1930-31, Lowell had urged the establishment of "a Society of Fellows, composed of a limited number of the most brilliant young men that can be found... Such an atmosphere should carry intellectual contagion beyond anything now in this country," he said. "To be thoroughly effective the Society should be well endowed, but where conviction of value is strong and enduring, the means are sometimes forthcoming." Indeed they were, and from no one other than Lowell himself, so that in little more than a year, the first group of Junior Fellows was established in Eliot House.

Lowell was personally more involved with the Society of Fellows than with any of his other projects for the College. Not only did he create and endow the Society; he supervised its operation and kept in close touch with its members, even after he had resigned the presidency, until his death in 1943. To him, the Society was the culmination and the end of his campaign to restore intellectual excitement to Harvard.

And his campaign really was over. His "war with academic tradition" had been in large part won. The academic reforms he demanded in his inaugural had become realities, the Houses he envisioned had been built, and the academic freedom he championed had been established. Whether he had changed student attitude or the character of student society as much as he liked to believe is debatable; that he had changed the face of Harvard is not.