Rembering Freidel

Please allow me to expand on the few words of mine about Professor Frank Freidel quoted in last Friday's Crimson. As I mentioned to your reporter, Professor Freidel's courses on American political history had a unique importance for an extraordinary range of people in the Harvard community, and beyond: for history students, undergraduate and graduate alike; for students in half a dozen other departments of this faculty; for the Nieman Fellows; for members of other Faculties; and for visiting scholars from all over the world. I can't think of any other historian whose teaching was so important to so many people. His courses were a major force in Harvard's intellectual life, and through Harvard, as through other universities in which he taught, in the country at large. And over the years he was a warm, generous, and supportive friend to generations of students, and to his colleagues. Bernard Bailyn, Adams University Professor