Before even discussing the rest of the trip, “he said he found the guy he thought we should hire,” Glimp says.

Pusey met with the Corporation to discuss education at Harvard—but supposedly did not realize until a second meeting in May that he was a candidate for the position.

As The Crimson suggested, everyone thought following Conant’s resignation that “Harvard’s next president will, in all probability, be a white, Protestant, Boston-born, Harvard-educated, University Faculty member, between 36 and 52 years old. At least, all his American-born predecessors have been.”

As the Faculty became more interested in research and less in teaching, however, the Corporation was hoping Pusey could break the mold and return the College to “the center of things,” Keller says.

Initially, the Faculty was not entirely happy about the decision to hire a president who was more of a teacher than a scholar, Keller says.

“The Faculty at this time was getting to be more and more professional—disciplinarily minded, and research-oriented rather than teaching-oriented,” he says. “The Faculty was going in one direction and he represented the opposite direction.”

Supporting Meritocracy

But Keller says Pusey “realized very quickly...that he wasn’t in Kansas anymore” and soon began to follow the current at Harvard, focusing on cultivating resources over improving undergraduate education.

Through the “Program for Harvard College,” Pusey raised $82.5 million, a large sum then, to strengthen the College through more student scholarships, construction projects and higher salaries to attract better faculty members.

As G.I. candidates declined, Pusey and his deans felt they needed an increased financial aid program to maintain meritocratic admissions, says Glimp, who was also director of freshman scholarships and later dean of admissions under Pusey.

During the last years of Conant’s presidency, the G.I. Bill had meant that the ablest veterans could attend Harvard without thought to cost.

But by 1953, Glimp says, “admissions were meritocratic, but the hole in the bucket was financial aid.”

More than 50 percent of the entering Class of 1952 attended public high schools—a large shift for the previously prep school-dominate student body.

By ensuring that part of the $82.5 million went to increased financial aid for undergraduates, Pusey hoped to maintain this more meritocratic admissions policy.

The students who graduated as Pusey entered, in the Class of 1953, were some of the last remnants of those World War II veterans who swarmed to colleges on the G.I. Bill.