War Affects Faculty In Social Science Fields

This is the seventh in a series of articles to appear during the coming weeks discussing the effects of the present war on the departments of concentration, their courses, enrollment, and Faculties.

Wartime demands on staff members have been the most pressing result of the current crisis on the social sciences of Psychology, Sociology, and Anthropology. There has been relatively little shifting of courses or undergraduate enrollment in these departments to date.

Although the list of Faculty leaves of absence is very short, the men at their teaching posts are threatened to be submerged beneath a swollen flood of war and academic work. Only in the Sociology Department has a noticeable number of teachers actually left Cambridge.

Four Faculty Members Gone

Four Faculty members in that department have gone this year: three because of the war and Teaching Fellow Reed H. Bradford to a position at the University of West Virginia. The other three, on leaves of absence, are Faculty Instructor Edward Y. Hartshorne now at the Library of Congress, Faculty Instructor George C. Homans now in the Navy, and Associate Professor Carle C. Zimmerman to the army air corps.

Quite the reverse has occurred in the Anthropology Department, where, instead of an exodus of staff men away from Harvard there has been a rapid inflow of research fellows to the University from all over the world. All the field workers from the Near East and the one working in India have returned and others from the war zones are constantly returning. Travelling fellowships are now being used for work in South America rather than in Europe, with some notable research being conducted there. One Anthropology instructor, whose name cannot even be revealed at this time, is preparing to do vital "hush-hush" work for the government.

The Faculty problem in the Psychology Department appears less serious on the surface. Despite the fact, however, that there has been no actual change in the number of men now instructing in the field, there has been a widespread doubling-up of teaching with assignments of a military nature.

Psychology is the only department of this trio which has made any nominal alterations in its curriculum. Psych 135, Clinical and Personnel Problems, is a full course which has been opened to additional students in the second half year under the new University ruling. 18 new graduate students enrolled in it at midyears. Two seminars have been opened this semester. Psych 231 on Social and Dynamic Psychology and morale problems is being repeated and has five enrolled students and 30 working auditors. Psych 236, Seminar in Psychopathology is being offered under visiting Lecturer Kurt Goldstein.

The subject matter of a number of other Psychology courses has been radically affected by the war. Psychology A, for example, has revised its entire second semester program and inserted lectures and reading on Psychology in wartime, war Neuroses, Motives in Fighting, the Learning of Signal Codes, and Problems of Civilian and Combat Morale.

One Sociology Change

One Sociology course has been dropped because Hartshorne left for Washington, but that has been the only alteration in the department's program as yet. Many adjustments are expected to be necessary in the future. Anthropology has been less affected by the war as far as courses are concerned and has made no changes at all. In order to contribute something to the war effort, the members of the department past military age are giving and planning lectures on such subjects as the Philippines and other countries in which the war is being fought. These talks are offered both in Cambridge and in army camps.

The number of undergraduate concentrators in these fields has not suffered a serious drop this year. Minor reductions have occurred such as the Sociology Department losing four Seniors of its total of 70 concentrators last fall. Rules of concentration also have only been adjusted within the general University regulations except for the granting of giving divisonals at off times in individual cases.

Each department, on the other hand, has felt a drop in the number of undergraduates taking courses in the department and an even more violent one in the number of graduate students. The Anthropology Department has seen a 25 percent falling off already and is finding it increasingly difficult to obtain satisfactory applicants for fellowships.

Undergraduate enrollment in Sociology has dropped from 344 to 311 partially because of the war and partially because of the usual fluctuation in half courses. Graduate students in that department were more numerous in the fall than ever before but already four or five of them have entered the armed services. The Psychology Department has as yet noticed less of a shift along these lines.