Veritas: Harvard College and the American Experience

by Andrew Schlesinger

When Josiah Quincy adopted the word veritas (meaning truth) as Harvard’s motto in the mid-nineteenth century, he saw the mission of the college as seeking new knowledge in order to come closer to God. It was a radical proposition. The imperatives of veritas are openness, freedom of thought, clash of opinions, resolution, truth-telling. In Veritas, Andrew Schlesinger traces some of the conflicts in Harvard‘s history between the forces of veritas and the inertial forces, the impediments to truth—sectarianism, statism, aristocracy, racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, the "shackles of ancient discipline." With this theme in mind, Mr. Schlesinger tells the fascinating story of Harvard College as an American institution. He examines the important actions and decisions of its leadership from Puritan times to the present, and provides lively details of its college life since 1636. There was no guarantee that Harvard would become a great university. But the commitment to veritas compelled the institution to change in the face of new knowledge or cease to be. Mr. Schlesinger’s book is about how Harvard changed. The tale includes a great many familiar Cotton Mather, John Adams and John Quincy Adams, John Hancock, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Robert Gould Shaw, Elizabeth Cary Agassiz, Henry Adams, William James, Theodore Roosevelt and Franklin Roosevelt, W. E. B. Du Bois, Ada Louise Comstock, James Conant, John Kennedy. Mr. Schlesinger punctuates his narrative with a great many marvelous George Burroughs, Class of 1670, condemned as a witch and hung on Gallows Hill; the "Butter Rebellion" of the undergraduates; President Willard receiving a sack of coins from the Charles River Bridge toll as his salary; Teddy Roosevelt getting tipsy at his Porcellian initiation; the l939 Communist cell that included the future Librarian of Congress. The men and women who shaped Harvard and were shaped by it were in many cases fine writers, speechmakers, preachers, journalists, historians, correspondents, diarists, and memoirists, providing a high tone to the proceedings. The history of Harvard is the story of the quintessential American university. With 32 black-and-white illustrations.

Genres: History, Education

320 pages, Paperback

First published May 25, 2005

Reviews

[Yong Huang · Rating 5 out of 5]

This book combines interesting facts, stories and anecdotes related to Harvard with the history of America in a seamless way. If you study American history from the perspective of education, especially higher education, you must not miss this book. America is great because the intellectuals like those at Harvard made positive contributions to the country, and has a dark-to-bright history because it took even the people at Harvard centuries of time to go from religious bigotry, racism, sexism to enlightenment and modern civilization.

Mr. Schlesinger wrote the book with the rigor of a historian making sure every fact is backed by historical archives. He's also approachable when asked questions. (I asked him on Facebook what "he (Andrew Jackson) submitted graciously to the Latin (at the ceremony of awarding him the honorary degree)" meant and he answered me.) I wish the book had a follow-up in terms of more facts and stories after 2005 when it was published.

[Lorraine · Rating 3 out of 5]

Today, Harvard is considered an institution of liberal-elites perpetuating power among the few in business, government, and non-profit worlds. Truth always lies somewhere in the middle. Veritas, however, gives the reader insight in how the current thinking about the university evolved throughout American history. It provides some interesting historical facts about not just the school but also the fashions of thinking in its past eras. It brings to like what people did not because they attended Harvard, instead because they had beliefs in themselves and their purposes that the school nurtured.

Readers will learn as much about American history reading the book as about Harvard. What caught my interest was their evolution on admitting and graduating blacks and women. Whatever one may think of Harvard, it is a groundbreaking place, and there are some interesting stories told about not only the liberal-elites, but the everyday men and women, whose names are not know outside of the school’s history, who made an impact on America.

[Allison · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is less than 300 pages long, which makes the breadth (1600s-present) overshadow the depth in some places. Schlesinger traces the history of Harvard as it intertwines with greater themes of truth, social justice and national events. I absolutely could not believe the amount of influential people that have gone through Harvard at some point in their educational careers. And this was published before Obama was making a serious run for the presidency.

[Saila Erion · Rating 4 out of 5]

While by no means comprehensive, this was a very enjoyable read and I would cheerfully recommend it, especially to people familiar with Harvard who are curious about the history of the older buildings in the Yard and the different historical figures who were involved with the College.