Managing Harvard

Harvard’s evolution from a Brahmin to a meritocratic university involved alterations in its governance as well as the makeup of its students and faculty. The cozy, we-happy-few atmosphere of the past began to give way to more professional administration. As a chemist accustomed to overseeing a laboratory and working systematically on problems, Conant rejected Eliot’s and Lowell’s style of running the University “largely ‘under their hats.’ ” His close associate Calvert Smith recalled that he devoted the pre-World War II years to seeking “a modus operandi adaptable to the present size and complexity of the institution, which at the same time still fitted in with the traditional precedents.” But the embedded culture of a venerable, decentralized university made change difficult. Looking back in 1952, Conant concluded that administration at Harvard was not very different from what it had been in Lowell’s day. He saw the central administration “as a sort of holding company responsible for the activities of some 20-odd operating companies.” There were occasional ineffective attempts to draw up a Harvard organizational chart, but as Corporation Secretary David Bailey conceded, “the difficulties of setting down complex relationships in black and white have always prevented their being cast in final form.” The University, he thought, “is suffering from acute decentralization.” For all his commitment to institutional change, Conant relied as did his predecessors on graduates of the College with strong institutional loyalties. When he assumed office in 1933, he brought in Jerome Greene to be both his and the Corporation’s secretary. Until his retirement in 1943, this consummate civil servant was Conant’s closest counselor on alumni and other matters. Greene’s successor was A. Calvert Smith, a classmate of Conant. Smith had strong public relations skills, honed by several decades in the wilds of New York’s investment and banking world, not unlike Greene’s background. Soon after he came into office Conant made John W. Lowes, the son of Higginson Professor of English John Livingston Lowes, his financial vice president. But it was not easy to work this new position into the existing Harvard structure, especially with power-seeking Treasurer William Claflin on the scene. When Lowes left for military service in September 1941, Conant told him his position would not exist when he returned.