“I think [Ford’s] real strength was that, as the historical profession developed, there tended to be an emphasis on national histories, and he really didn’t do that—he wrote on multicultural concerns,” said Thomas C. Childers, professor of history at the University of Pennsylvania, who studied under Ford from 1971 to 1976. “He was cosmopolitan and comparative, that was his strength.”

Ford was known for his meticulously organized lectures, delivered with his signature dry humor.

In fact, the only subject that could prompt Ford to stray from the topic of a lecture was his pet sport, baseball. Ford, who played baseball in high school and college, was an avid fan. According to his son, one of his greatest disappointments was that neither of his two favorite teams—the Chicago Cubs of his hometown and the Boston Red Sox of his adopted city—won the World Series during his lifetime.

As a scholar and professor, Ford received many awards and fellowships, including a Harvard Sheldon Fellowship, a Fulbright Fellowship and a Guggenheim Fellowship. He was a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences, the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton University and the American Philosophical Society.

He also wrote several books, including “Robe and Sword: The Regrouping of the French Aristocracy After Louis XIV,” “Strasbourg in Transition, 1648-1919,” “Europe, 1780-1830” and “Political Murder: From Tyrannicide to Terrorism.” When he died, he had written several chapters for a book on the Huguenots.

Despite all the accolades, Ford earned a reputation among his students as a private and modest teacher with a lean, yet erudite lecture style. He was known to offer tacit guidance rather than overbearing direction.

“[Ford] was the master of understatement,” Childers said. “When you went in to see him, it wasn’t so much what he said as what he didn’t say. All he had to do was raise an eyebrow.”

Turbulent Times

When then-Dean of the Faculty McGeorge Bundy announced his departure in December 1960, a long search for his successor ultimately culminated in the appointment of Ford in June 1962.

At the time, the campus was in a state of relative calm—the General Education system, put into place in the late 1940s, was running relatively smoothly under President Nathan M. Pusey ’28. Harvard was expanding, grappling with competition from other rising institutions.

But the latent social turmoil of the 1960s was soon to erupt on college campuses across the nation—and Harvard was no exception. As the civil rights movement and the Vietnam war gathered momentum, Ford found himself at the helm of a faculty beset by social and political strife.

Faculty meetings were marked by heated debates on subjects ranging from the formation of an African-American studies department to the University’s position on the conflict in Vietnam. In addition to his duties as dean, Ford had to mediate the escalating disputes between faculty members, students and administrators, which he did with patience and forbearance.

“When one reads transcripts of interviews with Dean Ford during the time he was in University Hall, it’s clear that he had a wonderful clarity about—and concern for—the undergraduate experience,” said former Dean of the Faculty Jeremy R. Knowles. “The troubles of the late 1960s were testing—and sometimes distressing—for everyone in the Harvard administration, and we can only be grateful that Franklin Ford generously gave us more than two decades after that, as a distinguished historian and teacher in the College.”

His composure served him well when, in 1969, campus tensions reached a boiling point and student protesters took over University Hall. The last dean to leave the building during the student siege, Ford sat in his office and said: “I am prepared to remain in the building for as long as you like, to discuss things.”

During the occupation, students seized many of Ford’s documents, including correspondence with fellow deans and professors, some of which were printed in campus publications.