But today, we are taking a break….so if you are signing in for the first time, this is NOT our regular weekly summary of the world’s media examining the U.S. and the globe. For that, join us next Sunday!
From Harvard: Education’s frontline
This past week, amid pomp, circumstance and a bit of frivolity, we celebrated the 60th reunion of my graduating class at Harvard…..
—photo by Mrs. Jill Millis
[Yes, that’s Unleashed, just behind the lady with the hat clutching the 1966 banner as we gathered on the steps of Memorial Church following a moving service where the list of our dearly departed (so sadly expanded since our 50th) was read in its entirety as the bells tolled.]
But most extraordinary is how our class, and our institution, has changed—morphing from America’s unquestioned best into a truly global university. Despite all efforts by America’s president, it has become a truly multi-national, multi-racial center of education, research and learning. Much of this became immediately clear during our procession by class into Tercentenary Theater—the vast greensward between Memorial Church and the steps of Widener Library. [By the way, it’s still the world’s largest with 21.8 million volumes (and growing)….thanks in a very modest part to the David A. Andeman book fund that each year buys a growing number of French titles.]
Our class had men vastly outnumbering the women, known then as Cliffies (members of Radcliffe College, now all simply Harvard). As Susan Engelke reported in The Harvard Crimson on May 17, 1962:
Enrollment in the Radcliffe Class of 1966, whose target size was 300, rose to 324 with the final flurry of acceptances last week. As a result, all the girls on the waiting list have been released.
Nearly 1600 girls—almost exactly the same number as last year—applied this Spring. The College admitted 391 girls, hoping for a class of 300. But according to Margaret Habein, Dean of Admissions, “the figures simply didn’t work this year,” and the class has already exceeded its predicted size and left no room for the waiting list candidates. Joan C. King, acting Dean of Residence, said it will be “a tight squeeze” to find housing for everyone, since as of next Fall the ‘Cliffe will have 24 more students than beds.
[Engelke, incidentally, unlike several of her fellow Crimeds, never went on to become a journalist, instead graduating Columbia Law School.
As for Harvard’s men, we vastly outnumbered the ladies [who you will note, Engelke called ‘girls’]. As Rick Cotton reported eight days earlier:
The Class of 1966 rocketed past all Admissions Office predictions as it piled up a total of 1220 men without the admission of any waiting list candidates. It will thus inadvertently be the largest Harvard freshman class since the veteran-choked classes of the late forties. The original target size for the class was 1185—a figure which was supposed to include about 50 students from the waiting list.
The author of this piece would become president of The Crimson, alongside his managing editor Hendrik Hertzberg, who went on to renown as a New Yorker writer and editor. Cotton went on to Yale Law School, then to NBC where he spent a quarter century, eventually as executive vice president and general counsel, before leaving to become executive director of the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey, a post he left just this past January at the age of 82 having shepherded the entire rebuilding of LaGuardia Airport.
Harvard’s admission policy in our years, of course, meant nearly four times as many men than women in our class. Not so this year, as The Crimson reported”
For the sixth consecutive year, women make up at least half of the admitted class. 53.6 percent of students identify as women, a decrease from 54.2 percent last year. 32 admitted students identify as nonbinary.
But our class did make a major step toward equality. While Cliffies’ dorms (no intermingling of sexes except on date nights) were still segregated from the men, blocks north of the main campus in the Radcliffe Quad, the class of 1966 was the first where men and women (who had long shared classrooms) received the same Harvard diplomas as their male counterparts (who they so often outdistanced in grades).
As we marched into Tercentenary Theater, on Friday, there were even more gulfs. We ‘processed’ past the 5th reunion class (2021) where the contrasts could not have been greater. Theirs was a totally multi-national, multi-racial group of vigorous young people. Quite honestly, I cannot recall more than a single one of my classmates of Chinese ethnicity—the late T’ing Pei, son of the immortal architect I.M. Pei—and two (I am doubtless missing a few, but not many) Black members of our class, including my housemate in Quincy House, Harvard’s illustrious football quarterback, John A. McCluskey Jr:
In his senior year, on November 30, 1965, with John at the helm, Harvard shut out Yale 13-0 before 50,819 fans at the Yale Bowl. He went on to a distinguished academic career in the then-fledgling discipline of African-American studies.
But there were and are other big differences. In the face of all interference from Washington, Harvard has become a truly global institution. As The Crimson reported the breakdown for the 2027 graduating class (it no longer releases such figures):
Harvard admitted the highest ever proportion of Asian American applicants at 29.9 percent, marking a 2.1 percentage point increase from the 27.8 percent accepted to the Class of 2026. Students admitted come from all 50 states and 102 countries.
And demographically, a mildly shrinking (now less than half the student body) are whites, a substantial, reasonably steady number of Blacks:
And my classmate, John McCluskey, was every inch a self-made man. As he put it in our class report:
In September 1962, I started work on the Dorm Crew (washing down and readying dorms/Houses for new classes) and anticipating fresmen football practice.
As did my roommate, the great Jim Dosdall, who worked diligently throughout his career, graduating to eventually becoming a senior design engineer at Ford Motor Company, helping develop the first hybrid. While still at Harvard, he married his forever sweetheart Karen, eventually becoming parents to 13 children, 44 grandchildren, and 24 great grandchildren—the youngest born the first night of our reunion as we were sitting down for a light buffet dinner in Memorial Hall.
And of course, how could I ever forget my other roommate, Gerry Angoff, whose biochem homework I endured late into the night in Quincy’s Mather Hall, as he suffered my late nights at WHRB.
—selfie/photo by Dr. Gerald Angoff
Today, following his journey through Harvard Medical School, emerging as an accomplished cardiologist, Dr. Angoff has become my ‘consulting’ cardio. And along with his charming and brilliant wife Roz, throughout our reunion they suffered my presence with my wife (and Unleashed editor) Pamela Title beneath their elegant roof in Reading, Massachusetts. [When I asked him how many lives he’d saved across his long and distinguished career, he demurred.]
The elephant beneath the sycamores
Of course the elephant beneath every tent and behind every podium this week was a shadow lurking from Washington—whose name was never mentioned, but his actions dangerously, pathetically clear to all as Harvard has sought to preserve, protect, and defend its existence and all it represents. This came most sharply into focus when I had the opportunity to chat with Alan M. Garber, Harvard’s 31st [and most resolute] president.
—photo by Pamela Title
Harvard, still under attack, it seems has decided on a prudent and elegant course. Barely two and a half years until a new occupant moves into the Oval Office, Harvard, with 390 years behind it, will simply wait him out, doing its clearly accomplished best to shoulder through, with vast resources mirrored by no other in history and a determination from alumni, friends and all those who care deeply about higher education of which Harvard always has been and will continue to serve as a beacon.
The next day, before the entire collection of alumni, Garber observed:
The force of this university exceeds the gravitational force of the earth itself.
From Cambridge, then, that’s all folks….Next week we will be back to taking the temperature of the world through all the media that chronicle its ups and downs.
Lecturer in International Relations at the University of St. Gallen, live from Zurich. An expert in the world's small states, those so often ground under the heels of the great powers, especially in the crisies of today spawned by wars, blockades, and misery far from their shores.
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