But by the time of Pusey’s selection, Keller says, the student body had returned primarily to the younger, less serious set from the uncharacteristically old, work-oriented veterans.

“By the early 1950s, people were commenting that it was starting to get back to the pre-war years of college hijinks,” Keller says.

One first-year climbed a tree in the winter of 1953 and refused to come down until the Corporation made Eliot House Master John Finley the president of the University. Another student suggested Adlai Stevenson, the failed presidental candidate, would be the ideal replacement.

But in general, Keller says, students of the ’50s were more interested in going to football games than in Harvard’s new president.

At Lawrence College, Pusey, a devout Episcopalian, had overseen monthly mandatory student convocations, often of a religious nature.

Pusey would tell Harvard students during his first month in office that “living and practicing religion must supplement the mere studying and reading about it.”

Liberal Leanings

Nevertheless, the student body’s gradual shift towards a liberal mentality made Pusey more popular early on because of his vocal opposition to conservative Senator Joseph McCarthy, who targeted the 24th president for allegedly being soft on communism at Harvard.

Charles S. Boit ’53 remembers the animosity of McCarthy as marking the selection of Pusey in his senior year.

“He did not like Nate Pusey, and of course McCarthy turned out to be what people thought he was anyways—low grade,” Boit said.

Boit recalls McCarthy’s comment about Pusey’s selection—“Harvard’s loss is Wisconsin’s gain.”

Pusey had opposed McCarthy’s election to the senate, and McCarthy accused Pusey of being a “rabid, anti anti-Communist.”

While he allowed that Pusey was not himself a communist, McCarthy said he could be “compared to the undercover Communist who slaps at the Communist Party in general terms, cusses out the thoroughly well known Communist, and then directs his energy toward those who are really hurting the Communist party.”

Glimp says most students, faculty members and administrators stood by Pusey, alarmed by McCarthy’s “reckless” accusations.

Several Harvard professors were called to testify before the House Un-American Activities Committee during the 1952-1953 school year. Associate Professor of Physics Wendell H. Furry said he was not a member of Communist Party but took the Fifth when testifying before the committee—as did two other Harvard professors.