Some of the Harvard Class of '66 Liked It Enough to Stick Around

After graduating in 1966 with a degree in general education and spending some time working in the laboratories of Harvard Medical School's anatomy department, Daniel A. Goodenough '66 found himself lacking the credentials that graduate schools were looking for.

"I was an unattractive candidate," he says. "The only place I got in was here."

Exercising his only option, Goodenough--who is currently Takeda professor of anatomy and cellular biology at the Medical School--enrolled in a Ph.D. program in the anatomy department, and, except for a short sojourn as a post-doctoral candidate at University of California at San Francisco, he's been at Harvard ever since.

And Goodenough is not the only member of the Class of 1966 who has stuck around to work at Harvard.

Drawn Back

Martha A. Field '66, professor of law at Harvard Law School, attended the University of Chicago after graduation. She was then invited by Harvard Law to join the faculty.

"Harvard Law was the best in the country," Field says. "This was too good an opportunity to pass up."

Similarly, Benjamin M. Friedman '66, Maier professor of political economy, was drawn back by his election to Harvard's Society of Fellows to receive his Ph.D.

"It was an effective recruiting device for me," says Friedman.

When he left again, to work for the investment firm of Morgan Stanley, he knew that the employment would be only temporary.

"I wanted to be an academic economist," he says. "Harvard was the best place to do my work."

Others stayed at Harvard for more personal reasons.

"When I left here, I thought I'd never come back," says George W. Brandenburg '66, director of Harvard's high energy physics laboratory. But after a trip around the world, he came back.

And Penny H. Feldman '66, a lecturer on political science at the Harvard School of Public Health, says, "I stayed because I got married."

Feldman says that she then decided to become a graduate student, and after that it was only a matter of time before Cambridge and Boston became her home.

"At some point you become a local," says Feldman. "You view things differently--you start reading the [Boston] Globe and Cambridge Chronicle every day."

Watching Changes

These five members of the Class of 1966 have vivid memories of their undergraduate years at Harvard, and have had the opportunity to watch things change. One such change is the integration of Harvard and Radcliffe in 1977.

Feldman remembers herself as a timid first-year in 1962, on her way to the first session of a freshman seminar. The seminar was being held at the Faculty Club, and women were not allowed in the front door.

"I had to go in the basement door," Feldman recalls. "Today, I can't even believe that was the case."

Brandenburg recounts the policy of 'parietal hours,' where Harvard students were allowed to sign a woman into their room during certain designated hours.

"The house master would come check," he says, if the students weren't signed out by the right time.

As Radcliffe students, Field says, "we weren't allowed to wear pants in Harvard Square." In addition, women weren't allowed to set foot into Lamont Library, she remembers.

Having seen Harvard both before and after the change, the alumni all praise the integration.

"The complete freedom of exchange was totally unheard of," says Feldman. "It's the healthiest thing that could have possibly happened."

Friedman cites diversity of the student body as another important change.

"The place has benefitted enormously from the racial diversity and integration," he says. "There are more non-white undergraduates in my class of 150 this semester than were in the College when I was here."

Also, students 25 years ago weren't as politically conscious as they are today, the alumni say.

"Students are much more involved in political issues than they were then," says Brandenburg.

He recalls "probably the most radical thing we did": one warm spring night, after the Metropolitan District Commission announced that it wanted to tear down trees along Memorial Drive to build overpasses, a group of students walked down to the river and began chanting "Save the Sycamores" in protest.

This was a far cry, however, from the 1969 occupation of University Hall by a group of protesters, Brandenburg says.

On the whole, Friedman calls the present group of undergraduates more motivated than the people with whom he went to school.

"Today's undergraduates are vastly better trained and brighter, as well as being more motivated, than those in my class," he says.

Tremendous change has also occurred at Harvard/Radcliffe Hillel, says Feldman, an active member as an undergraduate and today.

While she had trouble finding the Hillel as a first-year, since it was located at the "backwater of the University" near the Divinity School, today it is centrally located on Mt. Auburn St.

Attitudes and visibility have changed not just for Jewish students, she says. "There is much more sympathy and empathy for all ethnic groups today."

And Looking Back on Their Undergraduate Years, They Say Harvard in the '90s Has Changed Much Since the '60s