University's Capital Needs: A Neat Bundle of Fund Campaigns Totalling $160 Million

This is the second half of President Pusey's annual report. It deals entirely with the University's immediate capital needs. The first half dealt with other subjects. -- Ed.

But the greatest achievement of 1965-66, I hope the historians may one day say in retrospect, was the advancement of plans for the largest effort to secure new capital funds ever yet undertaken by the University. Since this will seem startling news to many, I must make an effort at some length, to describe it.

We have been continuously occupied in recent years in raising large amounts of new capital, in the first instance to meet a backlog of accumulated need. There have been two widely publicized successes in the effort. The first was the Program for Harvard College which ten years ago set out to gain $82.5 million and in the end it succeeded in raising $103 million. When the task of providing in Lehman Hall a center for the non-resident Dudley House is completed in January 1967 and when the tenth undergraduate house, now on the architect's drawing board, opens in September 1969, we shall be able at last to say that this Program is really completed.

The second major effort in recent fund raising was the Program for Harvard Medicine, which sought $58 million, chiefly to support new professorships and complete the Countway Library. This effort was brought to a successful conclusion during 1964-65, the final year in the long period of George Berry's extraordinarily constructive Deanship.

These, and a number of smaller less publicized efforts carried on at the same time during these years, helped the University to catch up with many existing needs, but by no means with all of them. And as the University has continued to respond to challenge in a period of dynamic development, inevitably many new, and some very large needs, have been freshly engendered.

Harvard is a university, but from another point of view, it can only be understood as a kind of federation of semi-autonomous institutions, all parts of which are ultimately responsible to the President and the Governing Boards. There are ten major units of instruction and research--such as the Law School, the Medical School, the Business School, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences (serving both the College and Graduate School)--each with its own independent departments and interests; and there are various other sime-independent units, many of considerable size, in the museums, forests, and other kinds of centers which together make the many departments of Harvard here and abroad. Each department is a separate budgetary unit with its own resources and needs, responsible for its own finances. So from a financial, as opposed to an intellectual point of view Harvard is many institutions, and its endowment is divided in comparatively small amounts among them (in quite unequal amounts, some would be quick to say). Though the University's endowment may seem large in total, when its separately owned fractions are measured against the demands of the many and various scholarly activities of the University, their adequacy comes quickly into question.

A New Policy

It is not surprising in view of the University's present standing in the world, and its extraordinary vitality, that demands for new capital are many and urgent. In view of their multiplicity it was decided last year that the University could not now mount another single central effort for capital funds and give it more prominence and attention than a number of others. Instead a new policy of fund-raising was adopted. Under this a number of efforts of equal standing (in terms of the attention and assistance they may expect to receive from the central administration) have now been authorized. The success of all of them is important for the University's health. Though the asking of no one of them considered in itself is frighteningly formidable, together they add up to a new, for us, stupendous goal of more than $160 million. But such is the measure of our present, immediate need for additional capital funds!

Let me try to indicate the importance and urgency of this effort by quickly running through the principal campaigns now in progress or in prospect. (I should like to say at once, parenthetically, that a major ground for hope for success in these efforts is the quality of the alumni leadership we have been able to attract to head them. These leaders' acceptance of such responsibility testifies both to their loyalty and devotion, and to the importance of the causes they have agreed to serve).

I have already referred to the proposed relocation of the John Fitzgerald Kennedy School of Government. The first step for Harvard in this large plan involves construction of a new building for international studies, the need for which has been recognized for a long time--indeed since before Mr. Kennedy was elected President. The building is intended to provide a home for the several international and regional programs which have developed, chiefly in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, during the past twenty years. While these have grown rapidly in number, size and importance, they have had to subsist where they could, inefficiently, in inadequate and dispersed quarters. Two years ago, in connection with its large grant for international studies, the Ford Foundation promised $2.5 million toward a building to provide a centralized home for these programs. But an additional $6 million will be required to construct this building and to provide endowment to support its operating cost. The Honorable Douglas Dillon, now serving a second term as Overseer after long and distinguished public service, is leading the effort to secure these funds. Though they have proved difficult to get, something more than $1.4 million of the amount required has now been raised, and surely the remainder will be found. But, as has been indicated, much, much more will then be needed to complete the desirable major move now proposed for the whole Kennedy School.

School of Design

A committee chaired by another Overseer, John L. Loeb, is seeking $11.6 million for the School of Design. This is the first serious venture to provide new capital for this School since its initial establishment more than sixty years ago. The School has wanted a new home for generations and it now also requires additional endowment for a number of purposes: to provide more fellowship support for students, to bring its inadequate level of faculty salaries closer to the general University standard, to establish professorships in new areas of concern, and properly to care for and strengthen its invaluable library collections. More than $4 million of the $6 million needed for the building has now been raised. (This includes a construction grant of a little more than $2 million granted on a matching basis by the Office of Education of the Federal Government). And approximately $2.5 million of the $5.5 million needed in added endowment has now also either been given or pledged. At the same time, happily, the effort being made for capital funds has brought sizeable helpful new increments in "soft money" for current expenses. But despite all that has been achieved, this important drive for new capital remains some $5 million short of its goal.

The annual operating budget of the Graduate School of Public Health has risen from $1.4 million to more than $6 million during the relatively short period of Dr. Snyder's deanship. During this same period more than $8 million has been spent by the School, for new construction and remodeling of its physical plant, and its endowment resources have risen from $6 million to more than $18 million. But the School still has longe-range capital needs estimated at $30 million. A pressing immediate goal has been to raise $7.4 million to add eleven floors to finish one of its major research buildings begun more than five years ago and to complete the final floor on another. The School was promised $2.4 million toward this undertaking by the Health Research Facilities Branch of the National Institutes of Health. Other donors--foundations, corporations, individuals--promised other sums; but crucial amounts were contingent upon the full cost of construction being raised by the end of 1966. By an heroic effort during which the Dean and his helpers campaigned tirelessly for months the funds, where assured and it is a pleasure to announce that contracts for the new construction have now been let. Meanwhile something more than $1 million is still required properly to equip the new areas. And in the not distant future $5 million will be required to raze the Huntington Building and erect on that site a new structure for teaching and research.

Business School

The Business School acquired last year two new small, and one completely remodelled building. Following a pattern set in the School's original buildings, they were named for Secretaries of the Treasury--this time, because of the interest and help of friends, for the recent Secretaries, Douglas Dillon, George Humphrey, and Robert Anderson. But the School seeks other buildings and additional capital both in the long and in the short range. The amount of the School's annual costs of operation covered by income from endowment is exceptionally small. In an effort to improve this situation, Dean Baker has been trying to add three endowed professorships a year. He has been successful in this effort in each of the past two years. Last year there were added the Royal Little Professorship of Business Administration, the George Gund Professorship of Commercial Banking, and the Frank Plumpton Ramsey Professorship of Managerial Economics, the latter, however, a joint professorship with the Department of Economics in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences.

There are pressing building needs at the Business School for a home for the Advanced Management Program and for a new center for growing activities in the international field. Approximately $6 million will be required to satisfy these wants. Toward this goal almost $2 million has been raised.

The Divinity School wishes added endowment to provide adequate fellowships for students, to improve faculty salaries and add new chairs, and to support its library. It also requires capital funds for construction--a second floor on the recently constructed Library building, and additional space for offices and classrooms, a dormitory and above all, a refectory. Something like $7 million must be found to achieve these goals. In the meantime Dean Miller has been forced to give primacy to shoring-up the School's immediate position by seeking increased annual giving for current operations. This item on the income side of the School's budget has been raised in recent years from almost nothing to more than $200,000.

Neiman Foundation

The Neiman Foundation is seeking $1.2 million in new capital funds to match a similar amount given conditionally by the Ford Foundation. This added endowment will enable our program for journalists to be restored to its original strength, it is to be hoped, even augmented, and its effectiveness and influence increased in a number of ways. The effort is prospering through the devoted, energetic, and extraordinarily able leadership of Mr. Davis Taylor, publisher of the Boston Globe. To date his efforts have brought more than $800,000 of the $1.2 million being sought in matching funds.

But these items, considerable as they are, by no means exhaust the list of needs and of efforts now being made by the University to meet them. I pointed out in my report last year that even with the acquisition of Longfellow and Larsen Halls the space requirements of the Graduate School of Education had not been met. Most pressing is the want of a library, because the limited space at present available for library purposes in the basement of Longfellow Hall is shockingly inadequate for the large and vital school for education we have now created here. Plans for a new library and research building are being drawn. It is estimated that this building will cost $5 million. Towards this goal an application has been made to the Office of Education of the Federal Government for $1.5 million, and additional funds in excess of $500,000 have already been secured. This effort, which is only now beginning to move forcefully ahead, is being led by a former member of this Board, Mr. F. A. O. Schwarz. But when the full $5 million for this important building has been found, the School will still have long-range needs for endowment totalling $15 million.

School of Dental Medicine

The Harvard School of Dental Medicine was the first university dental school established in America. It will be 100 years old next year. Though it is the smallest dental school in the country, it is by no means the least influential. Its program was drastically revised in 1941 to enable it to place greater emphasis on research and on the thorough grounding of its students in both medicine and dentistry. After a quarter of a century there can now be no question about the wisdom of the change, for during the intervening years the School has made an outstanding record in producing teachers, research scientists, and superior practitioners of specialties for the dental profession. And it now looks forward to cooperating with other branches of medicine to make an enlarged contribution to general health care.

The capital needs of the School of Dental Medicine were not included in the Program for Harvard Medicine. The most pressing of these is for a new building. Its present facilities are no less inadequate and outmoded than are those of the School of Design. The School is making plans for a new seven-story building, to be built on its present site, which will enable it both to have its own laboratories for instruction in the basic health sciences, and at the same time more than double its enrollment. The proposed new building, to cost $8.6 million, will triple the space now available to this branch of Harvard for teaching and research. Toward financing this construction a grant for $4.6 million has been approved by the Public Health Service of the Federal Government. So the immediate objective is for an additional $4 million. A Centennial Campaign is now being organized to secure these funds.

Two very special fund-raising efforts within the University remain to be mentioned--one already well underway, the other--an exceptionally large one--only now being readied.

Law School

The Law School has chosen the sesquicentennial anniversary of its founding, which it will observe in 1967, as an occasion to launch its drive for $15 million in new capital funds. Approximately $6 million is being sought for two new buildings primarily to provide more space for the library, additional classrooms, lecture rooms of smaller size, and more offices, both for the Faculty and for activities of administration. The other goals sought are $4 million for new chairs in criminal law and urban legal studies; $4 million for additional financial aid to students; and $1 million for increased endowment for the library. Professor Austin Scott has accepted the Honorary Chairmanship of this campaign. The National Chairman and effective leader of the strong committee, which has now been organized to conduct the drive in all parts of the country, is another member of this Board, and also a former teacher at the Law School, Mr. Robert Amory, Jr. Although the effort has only just begun to move beyond preliminary stages, there is as of this date a total of $3 million in hand, and it is hoped the drive can be completed by June 1968.

Program for Harvard Science

Finally--or almost finally--I come to a new very large effort to be made for the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and for the teaching of undergraduates. This is a Program for Science in Harvard College. Lest humanists immediately exclaim that enough has already been done for science, let me say at once that no neglect of the humanities is implied in the effort. As President Eliot asserted almost a hundred years ago, "This University recognizes no real antagonism between literature and science...We would have them all and at their best." But there is need now for enlarged new facilities for science (there have been very few significant additions in this area during the past thirty years), and especially for undergraduate instruction in science, little of which receives any support from Federal sources. Beyond this, though it is clear that the antipathy popularly supposed to exist between teaching and research is largely imaginary, still, if the proper role of research in teaching--especially in the teaching of science to undergraduates--is now to be demonstrated here, a new facility of the proposed kind is urgently required.

The final goal of this program--in itself one of the largest ever undertaken by the University--is nearly $49 million. The goal includes $14.5 million for a new center for undergraduate instruction in science; $12.6 million for biochemical facilities and for an enlarged program in biochemistry; and lesser amounts, from $800,000 to $5 million, for various purpose's--chiefly for additional space, for renvations, and for increased endowment--in anthropology, biology, chemistry, physics, engineering and applied physics, astronomy and the astronomical observatory, the Museum of Comparative Zoology, mathematics, geology and the computing center.

It is difficult to see at the outset where all this money can be found. Surely a considerable part of it will have to come from agencies of the Federal Government. There are already applications before the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and the National Science Foundation. And the case will be presented to private welfare foundations, to corporations with a known concern for science, and also to alumni and to other individuals. The task of securing the funds for this ambitious program will require careful organization and a sustained effort which is only now beginning to take shape.

Such are the major efforts which have recently been defined and authorized by the Corporation. There are several other lesser ones. For example, another $1.4 million will have to be provided to construct the Center for Reproductive Biology at the Medical School. A total of $3.5 million has already been raised toward this end ($1.8 million from the Federal Government and $1.7 million from the Ford and Avalon Foundations). In addition, the Rockefeller Foundation has pledged as part of the Program for Harvard Medicine the sum of $2 million payable over a period of years to provide staffing for the Center. The Medical School also has other large building needs. And we are still $800,000 short of the $2 million in added endowment we have been seeking for the Center for Renaissance Studies at the Villa I Tatti, Bernard Berenson's famous home near Florence. But even here there is no end to the list; for already other needs begin to appear.

More Pressing Needs

In terms of the future of the total American scholarly enterprise, one of the most important undertakings completed here last year was a thorough study of Harvard's system of libraries carried out cooperatively by the Director of the University Library and the University Librarian. Their report is being given thoughtful consideration. They point out that the Harvard Library, the first library in this country, and now the largest university library in the world, is at present necessarily collecting more kinds of material from more parts of the world than ever before, and further, that since the output of books is everywhere rapidly increasing, it will be possible to maintain the present level of collecting only by acquiring more books--and unfortunately, as costs rise, more expensive books--each year than the year before. It is expected that the University collections will pass the 10 million volume mark during the next decade. In addition to buying these books and maintaining them, there is a question of where, for example, in Widener, place can be found for those who will wish to use them. The number of faculty and students, especially graduate students, using Widener, has long since passed the limits the building was intended to serve; and their numbers continue to grow (the faculty group, for example, by 44 per cent, the students, including graduate students by 48 per cent during the last decade alone). The time is clearly upon us when we shall have to seek large additional sums both for capital needs and for increased operational expense if the Library is to continue as one of the nation's great resources for scholarship and the special glory of this University.

The increased expense almost certainly to b incurred during the next decade in connection with the growing use of computers in scholar pursuits promises to be even more formidabl. It is impossible at this point even to guess wh sums will be required in this rapidly burgeoing area, but already we have had enough experience to know that they will be considerable.

Another recent study documents the need for expensive additional facilities for the lively undergraduate program in athletics, primarily for a new, year-round multipurpose gymnaisum and the remodeling of existent structures. AthleticsS-