Talk:A. Lawrence Lowell

Comment

This page should mention the Lowell Commission, headed by Lowell, which famously recommended against clemency for Sacco and Vanzetti.

• The page now mentions the Lowell Commission -- Dennis 21:03, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

I was hoping some one would come back and cite their references for the remarks included under Other Controversy. However, after leaving these remarks on the main page with the "citation needed" marker no one did. Therefore, I thought this page would be a more appropriate location. I personally looked in several sources for references to these quotes and was only able to find a few dozen Anonymous Opinion articles published in The Crimson. Niether anonymous opinions nor The Crimson are citable resources.

The "Lowell Liberation Front" was two students who attempted to rally others to their cause but were overwhelmingly deafeated in their effort. It is notable to mention that their peers admitted they understood their frustration but felt it was not their place to impune a man who's been dead for 65 years because he doesn't meet our social requirements today. In my opinion, it doesn't deserve mention on this article.

Also, neither paragraph was written according to the WP:NPOV policy. -- Dennis 21:29, 28 April 2006 (UTC)

Other Controversy

• Recently, Lowell's administration has been denounced for bigotry towards Jews and other ethnic minorities. He supported a 15-percent quota on Jewish students, warning "the summer hotel that is ruined by admitting Jews meets its fate because they drive away the Gentiles, and then after the Gentiles have left, they leave also." He also segregated the school's dormitories by race, banishing African-Americans from Harvard Yard. "We have not thought it possible to compel men of different races to reside together," Lowell explained.

• Despite this, Lowell's portrait still hangs prominently in the dining hall at Lowell House, and his bust remains in the courtyard. In 2005, a small movement of students, calling themselves the 'Lowell Liberation Front', lobbied to have both likenesses removed.

These bits have been removed. No longer an issue. Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 00:46, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

References added for controversy

Dennis, I've added references for the "other controversy" sections, and added back the information which you removed from the page. All the facts mentioned there are well-documented, and removing them obscures one of the most crucial parts of Lowell's legacy.

It is easy to create a half truth when facts are not put into their appropriate context as you have done.

Controversies

I agree that the "Lowell Liberation Front" should be removed. The antics of a couple of undergrads with too much time on their hands don't merit mention in Wikipedia. (I lived in another house, but I worked in Lowell Dining Hall for 4 years, so I know wherof I speak.) I also object to the negative slant Lowell is given in this article, since I have some sympathy with many of his positions.

Did he do anything good as President of Harvard?

Lowell does seem like a despicable human, at least from a 21st century perspective. However, he did serve as Harvard President for many years. Can someone provide info on non-controversial accomplishments during his tenure? --Wikismile 19:46, 19 December 2006 (UTC)

He founded the Commission on Extension Courses which seems to have resulted in the creation of the Harvard Extension School - "He saw the Commission as an experiment in 'popular education' to serve the 'many people in our community who have not been to college but who have the desire and the aptitude to profit by as much of a college education as, amid the work of earning their living, they are able to obtain.'”[1] —The preceding unsigned comment was added by Gskuse (talk • contribs) 05:37, 25 February 2007 (UTC).

NPOV dispute

I personally don't feel comfortable editing this page b/c it would likely be seen as biased by other parties. However, there is clearly opposing opinions regarding the nuetrality of this article. This critisim in this article is by no mean NPOV and I personally find the citations referenced dubious at best. They come from original research from authors who clearly have an agenda. Nothing I see in this article conforms to Wikipedia's own guidlines.

Here is my view to support removing or rewriting much of the critism.

1. If the man was a bigot, an anti-semite, an executiuoner, homophobic, or anti-segragationist then let the article reflect that in neutral language, supported by the facts, defined by proper references to legitimate and citable footnotes.
2. If any of number 1. above can't be drafted then remove it.
3. My arguments for removing much crontroversial information is as follows:

a. Anti-semitism quota -- Harvard's Jewish enrolement in 1922 was 27%; Yale, Princeton, and Columbia's Jewish enrolement was less than 4%. This disparity would be a good enough reason today to reconsider any admissions policy. Also, the quote is not properly referenced and footnoted.

You happen to be right. When this subject came up in 1986 at the time of Harvard's 350th my response was to ask these questions. Who made Harvard desirable and are there any institutions today in which the founders wish to keep the hegemony at their instution. The answer to the first question is more than any other family it was the Lowells and their relatives and associates. The second question could easily be answered as well in 1986 with Brandeis, Boston College in Boston or Providence College. At the time if we re-examined them in twenty years 2006 their founding communities would still have the plurality of students and hegemony in administration and governance. I was right. This what Lowell was concerned about at Harvard the Jewish element at Harvard was rising geometrically and in retrospect he was right. Merely switching hegemony away from the founders is not neccesary in increasing diversity which Lowell actually helped achieve. Under Lowell the per centage of enrollment held by the founding community went down

b. Anti-semitic comment about opposition to Brandeis -- A. Lawrence graduated from Harvard with Brandeis. He knew the man personally for his entire professional life. He had every right to express his opposition to the position based on his knowlege of the man's character. I don't believe I've seen anything in his letter to President Wilson that he was opposed because Brandeis was a Jew. Also, Lowell's own 3rd cousin was Oliver Wendell Holmes Jr. who happened to be one of Brandeis best friends and most vocal proponents. People have different opinions about people they've known so well. Politics are ugly.

''This is naive, as institutionalized Back Bay anti-semitism was already understood to be discussed and implemented in code and not to be made explicit in public documents. You do not have to stand in the middle of Harvard Yard and yell "I Hate Jews!" to be an anti-semite."

c. Sacco and Vanzetti -- He was appointed to a commission whose sole objective was to determine whether or not the duo receive a fair and legal trial. He did his job. He had nothing to do with the prosecutions case, the defences competence, the juries finding, nor the judges resolution. History has not determined that the trial nor the execution was unfair or unjust.

On what planet? Yes, history has made a determination. Further research necessary. Anti-Italian and anti-comnmunist feeling among Boston elites was hardly negligible.

d. Segragation in the undergrads housing -- It's simple, the Jim Crow laws were still the law of the land. Not just from state to state but for the entire country. While the Jim Crow laws were challenged from time to time they continued to prevail and segragation was the law of the land until the mid 1950's, 12 years after Lowell's death. As wrong as it feels today, I don't believe his comments were those of a bigot. Bigotry implies contempt and disdain. Lowell's entire family were firm abolitionist and some of his boyhood hero's, including members of his family, gave their lives or limbs during the civil war. The idea of integrated housing in any institution would have been a non-issue at the time and therefore dismissed. And please remember, the US Army didn't even integrate it's forces until a decade after Lowell died.

e. Secret Court -- I don't know what to say of that. Homosexuality was by state statute illegal and actively punished by sentence of prison time. If Larry Summers or Derek Bok learned that their students got busted with a bag full of pot the students would be expelled. No explanations. You break the law, you get expelled. One could argue it's amoral to kick a kid out for getting high but they won't get very far with that until the law and the moral majority changes its opinions. Homosexuality was illegal across the board until gays started fighting back in te 1960's begining with Stonewall in NYC. They have won their rights since then and unfortuantely for those who suffered before we don't offer punative reparations retroactivly in this country. We move forward and hopefully to a better place. Being expelled may or may not have triggered those boys to commit suicide but it was breaking the law that got them expelled. Blaming their deaths on Lowell is wrong. No matter how he felt personally about homosexuality he had to expell the students. Alternately, I still believe this should remain to some extent in the article since Larry Summers was compelled to respond to the Crimson article and his words were well chosen..."as a period we have rigtly left behind."

Student suicides following expulsion are a pattern here. To say that Lowell's actions are unrelated is special pleading. Actions have consequences. Considering the number of closeted homosexual teachers at Harvard at the time, Lowell's actions are not merely following the law. He had a choice.

f. Lowell Liberation Front -- Again, unencyclopedic. Two college students protesting anything is not worth mentioning in any article. The fact that they were largley ignored by their peers only makes it less interesting.

Again, I feel I should excuse myself from editing this article but I also think that the community should take up this discussion. My comments above are only to get the discussion started. I believe that if the man was as negative as some wish to portay him then the article should reflect that, but prove it and nutralize the language a little better.

I also recommend disallowing IP's to do further editing during this nutrality process. If you look at the history most of the negative info was contributed or reverted by anonymous contributors.

I'll let you all have at it. Dennis 19:53, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

BTW -- If anything Lowell said or did contributed to the propagation, extention, or support of the Constitutional Law that caused the Law to remain unconstitutional and was later rectified by subsequent Courts then I think the information should remain. The Jim Crows laws should have been over turned in the 1860's not the 1960's. However, if you find that Lowell, acting in good faith, as steward of an important institutiuon, simply made the best decisions he could according to the social norms and moral majority of the day, which was his duty, then I think digging up his bones to criticize him misses it's target. With the excepton of a few good examples (i.e. nazism, communism, slavery, genocide) one can hardly expect everyone in charge today to anticipate a future shift in political and social expectations. Dennis 20:43, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

With respect to Brandeis, you are absolutely right— we cannot assume Lowell's opposition was founded in antisemitism without backing that up. I've removed that section accordingly; if somebody finds a good source it can be reinstated.

As far as Jim Crow is concerned, I believe you're wrong— I don't think any law in Massachusetts at that time mandated segregated housing. But, even assuming I am right in this, it is worth asking whether Lowell instituted this segregation or whether he inherited it from his predecessors. If the former, this paragraph should definitely remain in the article, but if the latter a case could be made for removal. I don't know the answer to this question so I'll leave the section in for now.

In 1849, Roberts v. Boston, became precedence, or law of the land, regarding the segragated society in Massachusetts. This case itself was cited by the US Supreme Court 47 years later in Plessy v. Ferguson which separated society nationwide until the 1950's. Dennis 15:22, 15 April 2007 (UTC)

I think the other three controversies have enough substance that they definitely deserve to remain in the article; but I agree that they all would benefit from fuller references. Doops | talk 21:01, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

My understanding of he Jim Crow laws were that there was no Constitutional protection guarenteeing equal rights or desegragation. The Jim Crow laws were federal and therefore superceded the power of the states. Mass would ave been bound by the US Supreme Court's interpretation of the Constitution. And sadly the Jim Crow laws existed in affect largely for the better part of the century. I believe Desegragartion was ammended in 1954 and Equal Housing amended in 1968. The states had no jurisdiction and therefore private business had no incentive to push for desegragation or equal housing. But you make a good point, if Elliot had desegragated the dorms and Lowell compromised existing policy then it should be cited and included.

I still find the remaining sources doubious and the content using gratuitous language. The sources come from one author for each instance and each author had a very specific agenda they were persuing. The best example I can think of is the difference between Editorial and Investigative Journalism, the former is he publishers opinion the later is called news. It's my opinion that the "facts" presented by the authors of the works cited are of an interpretive nature and therefore editorial or opinionated and not fact. And interpreting events from a former era should be under taken with care. With the exception of the Crimson article on the Secret Court (as most of it was discovered directly in Lowell's own archives after his death) the resources I read should cause anyone with a critical eye to question it's reliability. But like I mentioned, I'm arguing more for neutrality here than anything else. If he was a homophobe and drove those men to suicide, or if he hated Jews and wanted them all out of Harvard then I think it belongs in the article. The paragraphs as I read them are doubiously cited and inflamatory and I don't believe his actions are fairly represented or nutrally presented. OED or EB would never accept or publish such questionable work.

I find the argument for neutrality here poorly focused. To eliminate all that this author finds objectionable would result in, for lack of a better term, a whitewash. Neutrality as suggested here subtracts from the sum of knowledge, and enhances nothing. It is merely substituting one bias for another, and this substitution is in no way superior.

On another note, thanks for the quick response and thoughtful reply and good work.Dennis 21:23, 9 March 2007 (UTC)

With regard to the Secret Court, what is notable about the affair is the venom with which the whole thing was conducted, including continuing to give negative assessments of one particular accused 33 years after the fact, and contacting the employers of accused not even connected with the school to inform them of their alleged crimes. As is pointed out in the excellent book on the affair, there were other options. If anything, the entry on that issue in this article is too neutral. Exploding Boy 06:40, 18 March 2007 (UTC)

I'm making a few minor edits here, just deleting the part(s) where people have thrown in commentary to the article (such as "but apparently how other presidents behaved is not supposed to be discusses here?"). This stuff belongs on a talk page, not in an article. Morphling89 (talk) 18:13, 1 November 2008 (UTC)

Lowell's Own Opinions

I just bought a book by Lowell called "Public Opinion and Popular Government" (1914) which is not mentioned in the article. In one chapter, he argues that you can't have any true "public opinion" unless you have a homogenous population, but public opinion is essential to a democracy! He skirts the American race issue (merely asserting that immigrants must assimilate) and avoids discussing what should be done if a country is not homogenous. He also appears to believe that democracy in multi-ethnic Switzerland is an aberration.

Brandeis

This article states that Lowell branded Brandeis as a radical Zionist but states that Brandeis was not a practicing Jew. In Brandeis' own article it states he was involved in the Zionist movement - indeed was the leader of the American movement. So is this article mistaken in that respect? —Preceding unsigned comment added by 192.223.243.6 (talk) 20:28, 7 December 2009 (UTC)

—Preceding unsigned comment added by 198.179.227.58 (talk) 22:28, 6 December 2008 (UTC)

No longer an issue. Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 00:48, 1 December 2010 (UTC)

Quality and NPOV

I've decided to add a bit about academic freedom circa World War I, one of my interests, but stopped by to say that I find this article distressing. There are ways to write about controversy without beating people over the head. I hope to return and try to do that. It's possible to state facts, sometimes ugly facts, in ways that maintain a certain distance and that are appropriate to this enterprise. When I do so, I will do it carefully and in small steps so I can listen for feedback.

But one large step will be, I think, required first. The "re-appraisals" should be part of the narrative of Lowell's life. That would require in the first place that the narrative itself be extended. I'll get around to that soon. Then, for example, the Sacco and Vanzetti material would appear in the proper point in the chronology. The events would be recounted dispassionately and include contemporary assessments pro and con. Later "re-appraisals" could, I think, be handled in a footnote unless there is some sort of ongoing debate of significance that I'm unaware of that needs to be treated under "Legacy: good and bad."

On a related note, I'm working on a complete revision of the Secret Court of 1920, which drew me -- you know how these things work -- into some quite distantly related reading on academic freedom and now here. Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 19:14, 20 December 2009 (UTC)

Legacy

I'm curious what things at Harvard and elsewhere have been named after him. I know Lowell House is one, and the article mentions some other buildings that originally bore his name. Do others think this would be a worthwhile addition? Also, it may be worth mentioning within the controvery section that he was key in keeping women out of the Law School and vocally opposed to their admission. At the time, many other law schools allowed women. As a female HLS alumna, am I too interested a party to add this? -68.173.61.84 (talk) 22:54, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

I believe (not certain) that Lowell House was formally named for the Lowell family though there's an ALL over the main Holyoke Place gate. Not sure about Lowell Lecture Hall. My suggestion would be to call the Lowell House office and ask who the House historian is -- they'd probably be the best place to start. EEng (talk) 23:47, 24 April 2015 (UTC)

Lowell's views on women in education -- law students, faculty, Radcliffe, other roles -- could make for another useful heading. (I see no "controversy section".) He apparently thought little of Radcliffe. Being an HLS alumna hardly matters. It's a question of sources and tone. Bmclaughlin9 (talk) 04:34, 25 April 2015 (UTC)

Misc source(s) and quote(s)

• After a large number of Harvard students were arrested during a Harvard Square riot, Lowell pledged responsibility in court for the students' appearance at subsequent proceedings. "Dr. Lowell was an aloof sort of man, but he had apparently convinced himself that the police were almost as much to blame as his students. The whole undergraduate body had a feeling of warmth for Dr. Lowell which wasn't matched until years later when they used to see him helping his blind spaniel across Massachusetts Avenue by hooking his umbrella through the dog's collar." [2] p.146 (This was before he was Harvard's president, of course.) EEng (talk) 20:35, 13 October 2015 (UTC)

Lede, final para

...the gentleman who loathed gentlemanly C's...

Whatever is this supposed to mean? In any case, the final para of the lede is not represented in the main article, and should be deleted. Valetude (talk) 23:58, 17 February 2021 (UTC)