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Now & Then: The Selection of Rudenstine's Successor Bears Many Similarities to the Pusey Search

Another wrote a letter to the editor in The Crimson, suggesting that Adlai Stevenson, who had just been defeated by Eisenhower in the national election, was ideal Harvard presidential material. He urged the Corporation to "grow up with the times."

Communist Hunt at Harvard

Eisenhower's election as U.S. President in 1952 not only left a vacancy in the Harvard presidency, it also set the atmosphere in which the Corporation would need to select Conant's successor.

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With a Republican in the White House, Senator Joseph R. McCarthy directed his anti-Communist investigations away from the U.S. government, and toward other targets. Universities were prime candidates, and Harvard quickly became embroiled in the controversy.

The six Corporation members who had just begun the search for the new president became central figures in the anti-Communist debates engulfing the University.

Three Harvard professors were called before the Congressional committees devoted to hunting down Communists.

In addition to running a presidential search, the Corporation members had to decide how to handle the three professors taking the Fifth in response to the Congressional committee's inquiries.

Student Speculation

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