Riesman Looks at Emerging Meritocracy

DAVID RIESMAN '31, Ford Professor of Social Sciences, decided to live in a House when the House system was a residential experiment. The day after a story appeared listing Riesman among the first residents of Dunster House, The Crimson published an interview with Professor R. E. Rogers '09 denouncing President Lowell's House Plan.

Rogers found in the House Plan evidence that "the college is disintegrating." He called their construction a "desparate measure," and predicted that they would unsuccessfully inherit the fraternity's role in Harvard life.

Returning to Harvard in 1958, Riesman, an alumnus of the College and the Law School, now finds himself in Rogers's role as social critic of Harvard life.

In an article in this month's issue of Change magazine, Riesman described a contagious "cynicism and loss of faith" that makes the future of Harvard and other institutions like it "impossible to predict." The article is adapted from Two Essays on Harvard: Politics and Education in Harvard College, which Riesman plans to coauthor with Seymour M. Lipset, professor of Government and Social Relations.

Riesman outlines a shift from "aristocratic meritocracy" to "egalitarian meritocracy" which has taken place at Harvard over the 40 years since his graduation. Aristocratic meritocracy, loosely defined, is based on subjective criteria while egalitarian meritocracy relies on objective standards such as grades and test scores.

Riesman argues that the initial impetus for egalitarian meritocracy came from President Lowell's early 20th century drive to upgrade the quality of the Harvard faculty and student body.

In the early thirties, Harvard was "mainly a New England college with some mid-Atlantic appeal...pre-meds, who were unavoidably serious, and the deprecated Radcliffe students provided an audience for an otherwise indifferently regarded faculty."

Lowell began the House plan to mix the often isolated undergraduate groups and faculty. The residents of Lowell--the first House--were chosen to allow a broad spectrum of backgrounds and academic interests.

"The Houses helped provide a 'critical mass' of people potentially alert to conversation about books and ideas, and to redeem for adult faculty an undergraduate body previously regarded as largely indifferent to them," Riesman recalls.

AFTER WORLD WAR II, the increase in the applicant pool's size and the entry of new groups into the Harvard student body tipped the balance in favor of egalitarian meritocracy.

"The boom in higher education...brought the news of the availability of colleges like Harvard to a much larger group of high schools than before the war," Riesman wrote.

The increase in Harvard's Jewish population, especially the shift from German Jews to their less-assimilated Eastern European brethren, was "decisive for the changed temper and tempo of Harvard..."

Riesman believes that there has been a corresponding decline in the institutions that had served as standards for aristocratic meritocracy. In 1930, Professor Rogers found a "decidedly mediocre tone" in the College fraternities, which formerly made for "intimate contact between groups of students."

Riesman now finds that Crimson editors, "who once took it for granted that they would not get top grades but would get by manageably well," worry about how law schools will editorialize about their grades.

The social clubs' influence has declined. And Riesman also noticed that he has received many papers in Soc Sci 136, his course on American character and social structure, from athletes trying to live "in the double world of the training table and its powerful antagonists."

In Riesman's view, the erosion of the old standards has not been accompanied by the growth of new loyalties. "No new ethic, academic or intellectual, has taken the place of the older relative consensus about values."

THE RELIANCE ON numbers, in place of an evaluation of subjective personal qualities, has been greeted as elitism by many parts of the Harvard community, Riesman said. "The criticism of ongoing academic processes--'business as usual'--heightened after Cambodia, had its impact in undercutting the convictions or inertias by which traditional academic requirements had been maintained."

"By the late 1960s, some young people torn between competing values, between striving for meritocratic success and fearing both success and failure, became leaders of the contrameritocracy, even in some cases calling for open admission to Harvard College," Riesman noted.

In an interview last week, Riesman acknowledged that the reaction against strict academic standards has died down in the post-Cambodia political quiet.

Since Cambodia, Riesman said, "actions have changed, but not perceptions." He asserts that the economic downturn has increased the number of studious potential doctors and lawyers, but that grades have not been accepted by students as sources of personal validations.

Riesman himself was heavily involved as an undergraduate in extra-curricular activities. He was a Crimson executive, speakers chairman for the Liberal Club, and "I went to a lot of debutante parties."

The bitter competition which has accompanied the rise of egalitarian meritocracy has claimed many Harvard casualties, Riesman said. "The spin Harvard puts on those it validates is terrific, but the price is the casualties of the competitive process," he added. Riesman acknowledges a conflict between the admissions process valuing non-academic strengths, and the objective criteria holding sway in the contemporary Harvard environment.

ATHLETES ARE SOMETIMES especially wounded by the Harvard environment, Riesman notes. "Many faculty members are antagonistic to athletes," he explained. "Even the successful varsity athlete, especially a football player," often feels "that he must prove that he is not merely an athlete."

The Houses have not done their job of bringing students into contact with their peers and with faculty members, Riesman said. In the Houses, "defensive or inertial enclaves" form, insulating their members from contact with other students, he explained.

Riesman believes that Harvard must be made a more "supportive and nurturent" place. He sees a national trend towards more low-key schools like Brown, which recently instituted pass-fail grading on a wide scale.

The Houses are "the main route" to a more supportive Harvard Riesman said. He advocates a retreat from a full House system. Riesman would turn some of the Houses into dormitories, and run a few outstanding Houses with "scintillating" Masters. "The Masters, appointed for a short term, eliminating the idea of lifetime commitment, would give these Houses character. A House might specialize in something like natural science, music, and archaeology," Riesman explained.

The dormitory-Houses would be established in order to accommodate students preferring not to participate in House life, and because it would prove "impossible" to find 13 outstanding Masters. For some students, Riesman hopes, this handful of Houses will provide viable academic and social communities.

Riesman also favors creating more "workshop" type settings in the College. A workshop atmosphere, which he said exists in small departments like Vis Stud and Geology, emphasizes small groups of faculty and students working together on common projects.

In addition, Riesman advocates the integrating off-campus work into the Harvard plan of study.

ON NOVEMBER 5, 1929, the Crimson reprinted the text of a speech delivered by F.W. Taussig, Lee Professor of Economics, at the 50th anniversary dinner of the Class of 1879.

Within fifty years, he said, "Cambridge will be a place of brick and mortar, of noise and scurry and distraction. To the graduate school this forbodes no ill...But a metropolis does not readily foster a college. Is the old Harvard here to stay?"

Taussig's answer was an optimistic one. He imaged "noble buildings," "monumental bridges," the Yard as an "oasis in the city wilderness," and a College maintaining the "traditions and spirit of the past."

The future of Harvard will always be a little hazy.