Talk:James B. Conant

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Harvard University president
Conant's term as Harvard University president was the reason for his selection to the NDRC. It also saw his drift from the neutrality position favoured by most Americans to one where he supported intervention against Germany. His accomplishments as president of Harvard form an important part of his life. Hawkeye7  (discuss)  18:56, 31 July 2023 (UTC)
 * Agree 100%. Unfortunately (see below) much of the material in the Presidency section has nothing to do with anything like this, and in fact the Hanfstaengl incident actually augurs against the "drift" argument since it occurred at the very start of Conant's presidency. EEng 23:06, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

Miscellany in Harvard presidency section
About half of the section on Conant's presidency deals with sweeping changes in admissions and curriculum and so on. The other half relates uncontextualized incidents regarding the problem (common to essentially all universities in the 1930s) of how to deal with Nazis, plus a racist incident at a lacrosse away game. Neither of these passages tells the reader much if anything about Conant's personal feelings, or indeed the extent to which he had control of the situation. For example, we're told that the "President and Fellows" (not Conant personally) turned down Hanfstaengl's money; then we're told that Conant (personally, we're led to believe) turned the money down a second time -- with a citation to a 1936 editorial in the Harvard undergraduate newspaper, the Crimson. Then we're told that "While Conant declined to participate in the Emergency Committee in Aid of Displaced German Scholars", Thomas Mann and Einstein received honorary degrees. There's nothing to tell us what these (contrasting, we're led to believe?) things are supposed to tell us about Conant. The fact is Conant we vigorous in his opposition to fascism, and what we need is a biographical source summarizing that, not recounting of random incidents.

Then there's the stuff about the "one girl and six boys" arrested in anti_nazi protests: "Hanfstaengl's presence on campus prompted a series of anti-Nazi demonstrations, in which a number of Harvard and MIT students were arrested. Conant made a personal plea for clemency that resulted in two girls being acquitted, but six boys and a girl were sentenced to six months in prison." This is cited to a Crimson story reading in full:


 * Although President Conant's recent plea for clemency won acquittal for two girls being tried for the anti-Hanfstaengl agitation last June, the other seven arrested at the same time and for the same offences were yesterday declared guilty of disturbing the peace and of speaking without permits. For these offences, the seven persons--one girl and six boys--were fined $20 each and sentenced to six months of hard labor in the Middlesex House of Correction. Judge George James consoled the would-be patriots by his kindly, "I'm sorry to impose jail sentences."

Aside from the fact that this is a primary source (certainly no one actually served six months hard labor), there's nothing here about "a series" of demonstrations, or MIT, or (again) what this has to do with Conant other than that he quite understandably urged leniency. What in the world is such minutiae doing in the biography of a Harvard president?

And finally we have the racist incident at the lacrosse game. I'm sorry to say that shit like that happened at American universities all the time, and even sorrier to say that Harvard was maybe only a bit better than most in that regard. The text "Conant subsequently apologized to the Commandant of Midshipmen" is apparently meant to suggest something about Conant's personal views, but in fact it's sourced to a reminiscence by one of Alexis's Harvard classmates:
 * There was a subsequent campus protest at Harvard, a petition was signed (I can’t remember if I signed it), and soon afterward the Harvard Athletic Association announced that Harvard would never again withdraw a player for reasons of race. Harvard’s president, James B. Conant, had been away in Europe at the time of the lacrosse incident, but when he came back he apologized to the commanding admiral at Annapolis for the breach of cordial relations that Harvard had occasioned by bringing Lucien Alexis along.

Um, that's fine as someone's personal reminiscence 60 years later, but if we're going to include something like this in a biographical article, it's going to need to be sourced to a scholarly bio, with context and background.

As for After serving in World War II, Alexis was refused admittance to Harvard Medical School on the grounds that, as the only black student, he would have no one to room with. Alexis graduated from Harvard Business School instead -- that's completely irrelevant to this article. Someone apparently read The New Yorker and stuck it in. See WP:COATRACK. EEng 20:06, 31 July 2023 (UTC)

P.S. And what do the feelings of Harvard graduates about FDR, or the fact that A. Lawrence Lowell, for all his other qualities, was a crusty old fart, have to do with Conant either?


 * A placeholder to let you know I am preparing a response. A bit busy at the moment - will get back to you when I can. Hawkeye7   (discuss)  22:00, 1 August 2023 (UTC)
 * No hurry. I have no doubt that, in the fullness of time, you will come to see that I'm 100% right. :P EEng 23:50, 1 August 2023 (UTC)


 * I question your assertion that the readership can perform simple numerical calculations mentally. I was at the supermarket a while back, and their highly sophisticated computer system cannot handle transactions less than one dollar. These must be done by hand. You know, the old fashioned way. A customer purchased an item worth 35 cents, and handed over a $2 coin as payment. The teenage checkout struggled mightily with this calculation, and eventually she had to summon her GenX supervisor to assist. Hawkeye7   (discuss)  02:59, 2 August 2023 (UTC)


 * Hawkeye7 responds

Jennet Conant devotes pp. 138 to 141 to Hanfstaengl, in a book mostly devoted to Conant's role in and thinking about the development of nuclear. "In his first commencement address on a hot June afternoon in 1934, Conant spoke out against Hitler's totalitarian grip on education, and reaffirmed his commitment to the principle of academic freedom... Praising Harvard's long history of freedom, Conant argued that American universities must be vigilant guardians of liberty - only by doing so could they be of value to their country and worthy of their past. ... He was nearing the end of the end of his remarks when the air was suddenly pierced by the load cries of two young female students chanting "Down with Hitler!" and "Down with Hanfstaengl!""

- Jennet Conant

Here were have several points: that it was Conant's first commencement, and that students challenged him to back up his words with deeds. The fact that the university community and the nation were deeply divided over Nazism. The challenge to put deeds behind his words. Your point about them not serving time is a good one. I have added this to the article.

With respect to Roosevelt, again the issue is again about the conflict between Conant's words and deeds, but it also goes to the fundamental conflict between his vision of universal education as a form of democratisation and social mobility, which inevitably ran contrary to the alumni's understanding of what it was about, and their ant-New Deal political persuasion, which was a manifestation of their social and economic background. The present-day reader is aware that although implemented, the outcome was the opposite of what Conant sought: education has become a major barrier to democratisation and social mobility in America. That Harvard could treat the president of the United States in this way shocked some editors, but I've seen it occur with Barak Obama.

The text about the 1941 lacrosse game was inserted by another editor in 2008. The incident has been widely covered in many sports books but I chose this source because I wanted Conant's grovelling apology to Admiral Wilson. I have added a reference to the incident in Making Harvard Modern: The Rise of America's University. Hawkeye7  (discuss)  23:25, 4 August 2023 (UTC)
 * OK, now my turn to say I've got IRL stuff that will delay my giving this due consideration, but offhand I don't see how what you're saying explains why these particular incidents bear calling out in an what is supposed to be a fairly high-level treatment of a 20-year presidential term. EEng 00:33, 5 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Sorry for the delay.
 * Hanfstaengl: What you say is interesting (to someone interesting in Harvard history) but I still don't see how it, in particular, qualifies to be included in the long and complex history of Conant's presidency. Look, aren't there summary things that scholarly sources say about how Conant dealt with emerging fascism in Europe? That's what we should be quoting, and then if such quote(s) refer to the Hanfstaengl, Pound, and Emergency Committee incidents, then we might give more detail on them. But as it is it seems like editors have just picked random incidents of particular interest to them.
 * Roosevelt: What's the conflict between words and deeds? What source discusses it?
 * Alexis: I think my point about the inadequacy of the source stands. Even if we had better sources for the facts of the event itself, I'd then move the discussion to the question of why this particular incident is worth including, instead of quoting or paraphrasing scholarly evaluations of Conant's record on racial matters.
 * <b style="color:red;">E</b><b style="color:blue;">Eng</b> 23:59, 10 August 2023 (UTC)
 * I have three biographies of Conant: Bartlett, Conant and Hershberg, plus the memoir. All discuss the Hanfstaengl, Roosevelt and German university incidents at length. They do not summarise or evaluate, and I would not quote them or paraphrase them if they did. However I have summarised. Perhaps not well enough. There is another, more recent book, by Urban, on Conant as an educator. I have it on order, but it has not bee delivered. The Alexis incident is different in that it is not covered by the biographies. So we can remove it. I am just reluctant to remove material another editor thought was important. Hawkeye7   (discuss)  01:47, 11 August 2023 (UTC)
 * Well, I'll say right now, tentatively, that if no one authoritative has anything to say about what these incidents reveal about Conant, then we shouldn't be including them. Someone in a position like the Harvard presidency has many pressures on him (or her), from many directions, and just saying "Look, he did X", out of context, is meaningless. However, I'm going to suspend judgment until I see the sources for myself. But that will be several months at least, since I'm lost up the Amazon right now and await rescue. <b style="color:red;">E</b><b style="color:blue;">Eng</b> 06:25, 11 August 2023 (UTC)