PERSONALITY AND OR SCHOLARSHIP

For months the tenure question has filled the air. The desire to maintain Harvard's educational standards has served as a basis for demanding retention of the ousted assistant professors. There is, however, a new and more important reason why the "middle group" of teachers should be not only maintained but perhaps expanded.

Harvard's fame has sprung from two sources--the great professors who have resided here and the teachers who have taught the numerous leaders it has sent into the world. There is no apparent connection between these two elements; students are painfully aware that "famous names" have only the most indirect influence upon them. Formerly Harvard's fame accrued more from the first source than from the second. Now, in its fourth century, its renown is maintained by the leaders in every walk of life who have been educated here.

When Harvard was expanding rapidly in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries, it needed many famous scholars to attract a student clientele; it was a young university. Now its position is more firmly established. Now a minimum of great names is needed to maintain its place in the sun. What is needed, however, to improve the second and now more important source of its greatness is a greater emphasis on teaching in order to train the embryo "great names" of the future.

This emphasis on teaching follows the trend established by President Lowell in making Harvard a more personal institution. The roots of this trend lie in the House and tutorial systems; they result in a closer and more complete relation between teacher and pupil. Where once the impersonal lecture system flourished unconditionally, today its effects have been tempered by this element of personality. And this element is rapidly becoming a necessity if Harvard is to continue to turn out its share of leaders.

Since this is so, Harvard needs more--in some cases better--teachers. President Eliot once said that "two kinds of men make good teachers--young men and men who never grow old." Applied to presentday academic ranks, this means more tutors, more permanent appointees with a youthful outlook and personality. And it seems this type of teacher is most frequently found in the "middle group." Since the University chose to adopt a long run attitude towards promotions among the faculty, it would do well to consider the effects of its policy on the modern source of Harvard's greatness.