In hindsight, Conant realized that Berlin might well have construed his silence for sympathy. His public admiration for German universities was well known, and he had been one of the first prominent scientists to seek a resumption of communication after the war. He had spent considerable time in Germany, had many German friends, and was an ardent admirer of German science. Perhaps his deep personal ties to their country had led Nazi officials to believe he would be “open to their approaches?”
Whether his suspicions were correct or not, Conant knew that after the Putzi debacle, any action Harvard took where Germany was concerned was bound to be regarded by the public as a “judgment on the Nazis.” It was no accident that in the spring of 1935, Harvard decided to confer honorary degrees on two famous victims of Nazi persecution: the German theoretical physicist Albert Einstein and the novelist Thomas Mann, both of whom had fled Germany in 1933 after Hitler came to power. The exiled Heinrich Brüning, one of the last chancellors of the Weimar Republic, was also invited to lecture. Brüning, a Catholic who was an outspoken opponent of the Nazi Party, was later offered a place on the faculty. Conant also went out of his way to publicly condemn the forces that threatened free intellectual and political inquiry in speech after speech. “In at least two foreign countries we see brutal and degrading tyranny,” he warned in a baccalaureate sermon in June 1935. “In the whole world, reason ebbs and hope for freedom and liberty runs low.”
When he denounced Nazism, which he did increasingly in the mid-1930s, Conant was fastidious about confining his remarks to the realm of education, not wanting to enmesh the university in politics. As Harvard’s leader, he made academic freedom the fundamental issue. The Nazi threat, as Conant articulated it, was aimed at the very heart of universities, and he was relentless in his attacks on their pernicious educational policies: “The suppression of academic freedom, rigid censorship, the abolition of individual liberty of opinion.” Democratic societies had to guard the “spirit of inquiry” against persecution, “or by a series of definite steps we shall find ourselves living in a spiritual prison with an organized mob for our jailors.”
Despite his doubts about acquiescing to Nazi authorities, when it came to deciding if Harvard would join in the celebration of the 550th anniversary of the University of Heidelberg, Conant chose not to snub the Nazi-controlled institution, even though he believed “the case for a sharp refusal was easy to make.” The once-proud university had been purged of Jewish scholars, and almost one quarter of the faculty had been fired or coerced into resigning. Oxford and Cambridge immediately announced that they would boycott the event, with every other British university acting accordingly, as well as many throughout Europe. American universities, however, did not demonstrate the same solidarity, with Columbia, Cornell, and Yale universities among the two dozen who announced they would pay their respects. Conant argued that Harvard should accept Heidelberg’s invitation, both as a matter of principle and practicality. “Even if one despised the regime in power,” he maintained, one should endeavor “to build a scholarly bridge between two nations”—if only to give encouragement to those still engaged in the struggle for freedom within Germany.
His memories of the bitter divisiveness that led to the last conflict convinced him the European universities had taken “an unwise step in breaking diplomatic relations” with their German counterparts. “If one allows political, racial, or religious matters to enter into a question of containing academic and scientific relations,” he reasoned, “one is headed down the path which leads to the terrible prejudices and absurd actions taken by scientists and universities during the World War.” He preferred to honor the “ancient ties” which united them, independent of the current tensions. Conant was also motivated by the fact that Harvard was about to issue invitations to its own three hundredth anniversary, to be held in the fall. He argued that the international celebration would not be complete without the presence of the Germans, so at least a dozen were included on the final guest list. He anticipated that the decision would not be well received in certain quarters, but he was unprepared for the “shower of abuse.” Angry letters poured in, many of them excoriating him for maintaining friendly relations with the Reich. Conant resented the implications. It had been a difficult decision. Torn over what to do, he had consulted with the presidents of Columbia and Yale, and together they had “weighed the pros and cons” before sending delegates. Moreover, he considered himself to be “strongly anti-Nazi,” his views a matter of public record. “No one seemed to remember our letter to Hanfstaengl,” he wrote ruefully of the document that was the “crystallization of resentment” he bore Hitler’s regime.
Harvard’s academic community abided by Conant’s decision, but at Columbia, where President Nicholas Murray Butler’s accommodationist stance was already a point of contention, students and faculty demanded angrily he rescind his acceptance of the Heidelberg invitation. After a noisy rally in front of his home, Butler had the student leader expelled and fired faculty agitators. As opposition mounted, he proposed that Columbia, Harvard, and Yale issue a joint statement, or possibly three identical statements, condemning Nazism, and submitted a rough draft of what he had in mind.
Conant responded that he and president James Angell of Yale thought his letter “perhaps too gentle” to serve their purpose. Conant wanted to stress that academic freedom was under siege in many countries. He also felt three identical statements was discourteous. Instead, he favored a joint statement deploring Nazi domination that could serve as a fig leaf of sorts in the event the academic pageant was hijacked by propaganda.
Only minutes into the opening ceremony at Heidelberg, it was apparent the birthday party was going to be a political orgy. The festival was launched by a Nazi military review, the traditional procession of brightly colored silks and academic robes replaced by squads of black-shirted guards and brown-shirted storm troopers. Once a citadel of learning, Heidelberg had been reduced to a factory for Nazi ideas and ideals. The speakers all spouted the same Aryan ideology and fraudulent race science. Repulsed by remarks made by the minister of education, Bernhard Rust, who asserted the supremacy of the Nazi Weltanschauung, or worldview, Angell wanted to publish their statement of protest. Conant conceded that Rust and others “pronounced a lot of nonsense about education and research, nonsense which,” he added, “is not only absurd but dangerous.” But it could have been worse. For his part, Butler saw nothing terribly amiss. The three university presidents concluded there was no need to disassociate themselves from the proceedings and cowardly withheld their denunciatory statement.
Conant was soon second-guessing himself. Heidelberg had been a shameful spectacle, and he could not deny there had been an element of expediency in his decision to send representatives rather than give offense by refusing the invitation and run the risk of reciprocal boycotts. “What my views would have been if we had not been celebrating our tercentenary, I cannot tell you,” he admitted a year later to Princeton’s president, Harold W. Dodds, granting that the inopportune timing of their back-to-back academic pageants may have made him more amenable, and he might have been “rationalizing a situation into which circumstances forced us!”
When the issue came up again a year later with a request to attend Göttingen’s two hundredth, Conant still clung stubbornly to the hope that contact could be maintained. Given the outcry over Heidelberg, and increasingly distressing news from Germany, Grenville Clark and others persuaded him to turn it down. Rather than decline the invitation outright, however, Conant chose to be noncommittal. Harvard notified Göttingen that it would “endeavor” to send a delegate, leaving it unclear if the university was refusing to participate or simply that no one was available to go. Not yet much of a statesman, he failed to anticipate the hazards of ambiguity. As a consequence, in the weeks that followed, people either attacked or applauded the decision, depending on how they interpreted his intentions.
Looking back two decades later on his strained “diplomatic relatio
ns” with Germany, Conant would reflect that the Nazis’ emergence as a major force placed him on the horns of a cruel dilemma: “the dilemma of those abroad who had friendly feelings for Germany but detested Hitler.” Although criticized for being indecisive and inconsistent, he endeavored to occupy a middle ground that he defined as the international fraternity of scholars. Like most compromises, however well meant, it was hard to defend. The difficulty was that “a friendly act” toward Germany could “always be misinterpreted as a friendly act toward Hitler. On the other hand, a repudiation of Hitler could always be misinterpreted as a repudiation of Germany.” It was a dilemma he would continue to wrestle with until the Nazis’ escalating “barbarity” made any further concessions impossible.
* * *
Ironically, even in his liberty-proclaiming Massachusetts, controversy flared over the issue of academic freedom, catapulting Conant into the forefront of the debate and a role of national leadership. His first year as president coincided with the first year of the New Deal, and everywhere he went, he ran into irate graduates fuming about the “dangerous follies of the current administration.” The fact that FDR was one of them, class of 1904, only made it worse. The majority of the Harvard community, young and old, opposed Roosevelt politically and loathed him personally—the standard accusation was that he was a “traitor to his class”—so much so that the Reverend Walter Russell Bowie, FDR’s old Crimson colleague, was astonished by the “rancorous and almost hysterical political animus that rose against him and what he stood for.”
Most of the specific complaints Conant heard were about the radical teaching of economics, specifically the selection of teachers who were advocates of Roosevelt’s unsound fiscal policy. Conant vigorously defended the composition of his faculty. Harvard’s economists, be they Democrat or Republican, prolabor or laisser-faire, were entitled to their own ideas. But as criticism of the New Deal continued to mount, so did the anger at the men responsible for the reviled political revolution. Roosevelt relied heavily on scholarly expertise, and his alphabet agencies were brimming with Harvard men: Lloyd Garrison, chairman of the National Labor Relations Board; Thomas H. Eliot, grandson of the former college president, who served as chief counsel to the Social Security Board; influential aides Adolf Berle Jr., Benjamin V. Cohen, and Thomas Corcoran; economic advisor Stuart Chase; and roving administrator Archibald MacLeish. “This country is being run by a group of college professors,” griped West Virginia senator Henry Hatfield, summing up the common suspicion that “this brain trust is endeavoring to force Socialism on the American people.”
Second only to FDR, the Harvard New Dealer they loved to hate was Felix Frankfurter, the president’s close friend and ace recruiter. Donors expressed doubts about the outspoken law professor; a letter arrived from one offering a large sum of money if Conant would fire him. Mrs. Charles Francis Adams III, the wife of a Harvard overseer, cornered Conant at a dinner party and “quizzed” him on whether or not Felix Frankfurter was “a dangerous Communist.” Try as he might to preserve the appearance of political neutrality, Conant was always on the defensive.
The anti–New Deal sentiment, which continued to grow in the year running up to the 1936 election, reached a crescendo when the foremost liberal in FDR’s Cabinet, Henry A. Wallace was chosen to receive an honorary degree in the spring of 1935. As secretary of agriculture, Wallace had devoted himself to carrying out his groundbreaking farm relief program with such ability and fortitude that even the Crimson editors grudgingly conceded their admiration. Unfortunately, shortly after he was invited, the once little-known plant scientist kicked his campaign into high gear and took it upon himself to go to New England and deliver a speech lambasting New England manufacturers. The Board of Overseers was apoplectic, with some members hotly demanding the honor be withdrawn. Conant faced them down, and Wallace collected his degree. Taking great care in the wording of the accompanying citation, Conant, who privately approved of the New Deal as a “worthwhile experiment,” revealed his sympathies in his description of Wallace as “a public servant of deep faith and high integrity who finds courage to attempt an uncharted journey in our modern wilderness.”
His high praise caused institutional nervousness among loyalists of the old order, and the grumbling continued. It had not escaped their notice that Conant often expressed admiration for FDR’s goals and gift for lifting the country’s spirits, or that he and his wife were among the steady procession of Harvard visitors to sign the White House guest book. With the launching of the Second New Deal in July 1935, and FDR’s pushing through his “wealth tax” a month later, the alumni were soon up in arms again.
Some saw Conant’s preoccupation with “meritocracy,” and endless speeches on equal opportunity and helping the have-nots access a Harvard education, as taking a page straight out of Roosevelt’s reform agenda. In his second President’s Report, Conant had stepped up his rhetoric, explicitly linking the availability of scholarship money to social mobility. In an ardent appeal for more prize fellowships, he argued that the American dream of equal opportunity would soon disappear if nothing was done. The Western frontier that Harvard historian Frederick Jackson Turner glorified had vanished, the huge immigrant migrations of the turn of the century were at an end, and the tremendous changes caused by industrialization were unlikely to find a parallel in the years ahead. “We appear to be entering a static period in our social history,” Conant worried. “Many powerful factors tend to force even the most ambitious youths into a groove predetermined by geographical and economic considerations.” He was absolutely committed to the idea that a college education, available to everyone, could replace the distinctive democratizing role played by the open continent, and provide a means for every citizen to rise up in the world.
Not only was the increased stratification of American society a problem, Conant believed the search for a few good men capable of rising to the top—based on merit measured by their ability and knowledge—and the chance to provide them with the training necessary to make them leaders in the fields of medicine, law, and science, could make all the difference to the country’s future. “The presence or absence of a few outstanding thinkers in a profession may determine for years the whole trend of a branch of human thought and practice.” As the Depression illustrated all too clearly, the need for able leaders to help conquer the ongoing crisis had never been more urgent. Conant’s “academic New Deal,” as the New York Times touted it, proposed to put Harvard “in a position to bear her full share of the burden of this responsibility.”
Conant’s message, like FDR’s, assumed a mandate for change that not everyone shared. Conservative alumni blamed their earnest, conscience-stricken boy-president for the university’s drift to the left. Their dissatisfaction was hurting the fund-raising efforts for Harvard’s upcoming tercentenary, the all-important event that, for better or worse, would be seen as a benchmark of Conant’s tenure thus far. Complicating matters was that Lowell, who was pouring all his octogenarian energy into planning his part in the birthday celebration, was an arch foe of the New Deal. Lowell let it be known that he was “less than pleased” that Conant had invited Roosevelt to attend as an honored guest and asked him to address the alumni. Indignant, Lowell said he would not preside over any ceremony at which Roosevelt spoke. With the election less than two months after the Harvard festivities, he was not going to give that man in the White House the opportunity to deliver a “stump speech.” His annoyance, Conant felt sure, was exacerbated by the prospect of “having to introduce a man he despised to an audience he loved.”
Lowell was eventually persuaded that short of a public scandal, a speech by the sitting president was inevitable. Still piqued, he wrote FDR a condescending letter—addressing the chief executive as “Mr. Franklin D. Roosevelt”—suggesting that he limit his remarks to “about ten minutes.” Conant, who was caught in the middle, did not care for Lowell’s tone, “which was that of a schoolmaster telling a pupil what to say—or rather what not to
say.” Roosevelt took even greater exception to Lowell’s attitude: “Damn,” he wrote Frankfurter, and asked for advice on how to respond to the cantankerous old man.
While Conant attempted to soothe Lowell’s ego, assuring him that it would be “very bad politics for [FDR] to speak too long” and “he is above everything else a politician,” Frankfurter ran interference on the other end, with Roosevelt relying on him to use his “ca’m jedgment” to draft a dignified response. Together they managed to defuse the situation and persuade the feuding aristocrats to play nicely, though Frankfurter later described the correspondence between the president emeritus of Harvard and the president of the United States as “incredible among cultured men and without precedent in this country.”
While Conant was busy fending off charges of New Deal indoctrination at Harvard, he was aware of the “increasing suspicion of academic people” generally throughout the country, fueled by the conservative publisher William Randolph Hearst’s crusade against “Red professors.” Playing on the anxiety created by the increased Communist and Socialist activity during the Depression, Hearst unleashed a wave of editorials charging that some of the country’s foremost educators were plotting sedition and deliberately misleading students into being “disloyal to our American ideals.” The country was being destroyed by the “Raw Deal,” as Hearst called it, and Roosevelt, whose Cabinet was crawling with professors, was a tool of radical intellectuals. The only cure was to root out the Red teachers and propagandists who were corrupting the young.
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