The Corporation chastised the three for their decision, and put Furry on “probation,” but did not dismiss them from Harvard.

Pusey, called out by McCarthy during his first year as president, said publicly that no members of the Harvard faculty were communists.

In the 1950s, Pusey saw the increasing liberalization of the student body and the shift away from the old aristocratic mentality.

And, at the time, his staunch defense of academic freedom and support of increasingly meritocratic admissions.

But by the late 1960s, this growing liberalism would reach its height with the 1969 storming of University Hall. This ultimate leftist protest revealed how far the campus had shifted since Pusey’s inauguration.

And the president who was responsible for bringing Harvard into the modern world of academia retired soon after.

—Staff writer Elisabeth S. Theodore can be reached at theodore@fas.harvard.edu.