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Abbott Lawrence Lowell was many things: a member of the Class of 1877,
the Eaton Professor of the Science of Government, and the twenty-second
President of Harvard University. But he was, above all, a dangerous
bigot—a man of virulent prejudices who systematically used his position
of power to exclude and oppress those whom he hated.
William Wright’s new book focuses on the notorious secret
“Court” which Lowell convened in 1920 to target and destroy gay
students and faculty. But the former University president found a true,
lifelong vocation in the paranoid persecution of those who differed
from him, whether in their sexual orientation, their faith, or the
color of their skin.
Lowell’s worldview amounted to undisguised white Christian
supremacy, and he did not hesitate to put these diseased beliefs into
action. In 1922, Lowell expelled all African-American students from
Harvard Yard, declaring firmly (as quoted in a 1971 issue of
Commentary) that “We have not thought it possible to compel men of
different races to reside together.”
Shortly thereafter, he persuaded the Faculty to adopt cryptic
changes to admissions policy which reduced the percentage of Jewish
freshmen at Harvard from 27.6 percent in 1925 to less than 15 percent
when he retired in 1933, according to Jerome Karabel’s scathingly
comprehensive “The Chosen: The Hidden History of Admission and
Exclusion at Harvard, Yale, and Princeton.”
Karabel has unearthed a letter to a faculty member in which
Lowell explains that “The summer hotel that is ruined by admitting Jews
meets its fate, not because the Jews it admits are of bad character,
but because they drive away the Gentiles, and then after the Gentiles
have left, they leave also.”
One might expect Harvard to be embarrassed by such a former
leader. But the man responsible for these undeniably, irrevocably
hateful words and actions is still held in high honor by the
University. The azure-domed House on Mt. Auburn Street bears his family
name; a stately bust of Lowell himself perches to one side of its
picturesque courtyard. The Lowell Dining Hall bustles today with
countless students its namesake would have undoubtedly labored to keep
out—thriving undergraduates who happen to be female, gay,
African-American, Jewish, or anything other than members of Lowell’s
own high-WASP caste. Hanging prominently on the far wall, a large
portrait of the former president stares down and frowns.
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