War! Peace!

The “Malden Mite” was gearing up for his last hurrah.

Carroll M. Lowenstein ’52-’54 was captain of the Harvard football team and entered the fall of 1951 ready to finish his final undergraduate year and play his last games for the Crimson.

Then the news came.

As war loomed half-way around the world in Korea, word arrived to Lowenstein that he had been drafted.

Team doctors rushed to find a way to keep him off the battlefield and on the football field. He had broken his ankle the previous spring. And, though the medical staff had given him the all-clear to play football, they insisted that he could not enter the military because of the treatments his injury required.

Despite the insistence of doctors and fans, Lowenstein told his teammates in late September: “I’m ready to go next Wednesday, if they want me.”

It turned out that Uncle Sam did want the lightning quick 150-pound tailback, who was famous for his bullet-like passes—which were said to come at receivers so hard that coaches asked him to ease up when he first joined the Crimson squad.

So Harvard lost its football star, along with many other undergraduates, to the war effort.

When students had returned that fall, reassuring words had greeted them. Though the world beyond the Yard was embroiled in a seemingly endless war, an editorial in The Crimson had welcomed students with the promise that “there is still some security to be found in an academic atmosphere—temporary security from being called into the armed services, permanent security in the quest for truths even greater than world wars, and the insecure security of theories that explain what is happening in terms of law, nature, and experience.”

But quickly, as senior year marched on for the Class of 1952, war crept inside the University walls.

Some students, such as the football captain, burst with patriotic duty as ROTC membership swelled and veterans reaped the benefits of a newly extended G.I. Bill.

But others became disaffected with the government’s continuing demands, and for the first time since World War II students formed peace movements and the campus saw its first inklings of rebellion.

ROTC

By the end of September 1951, ROTC enrollment among Harvard men had swelled. Air Force ROTC became so popular that the program actually had to turn applicants away—of the 275 students who signed up for air force reserves, the program could only accommodate 235.

Students protested, claiming they were randomly dropped from the program. But Air Force ROTC’s head, Colonel Frank P. Bostron, explained that there was indeed a system for rating prospective cadets and that the students who had been cut from the Air Force would be offered placement in the Army’s program.

“We’d like to take them all, but it would be impossible,” he said. “We got orders from the Defense Department to pare the Corps down to 235 and we did it.”

At the same time that the national ROTC program ballooned, the armed forces increased the duration of required service in the reserves. Students who received scholarships from the armed services had signed up with ROTC expecting to serve two years, but the new requirements added between four months and a year to this.

And the situation was graver for those who did not receive tuition from the army. Previously they had also served two years in the reserve, but under the new rules they were made to spend eight years in either an active or reserve unit after graduation.

The heightened burden of military service angered students, because the change in the governmental policy put them in a tough position.

Students who were not part of an ROTC program faced the specter of the draft. But while students who joined the reserves received draft exemptions until they earned their degrees, that option now meant a prolonged term of service after graduation.

Angry naval cadets told The Crimson the new policy was “an obvious breach of contract.” Many withdrew from the program, giving up their draft immunity to face the prospect of leaving the College and entering the war.

Early Rumblings

Members of ROTC were not the only students frustrated with the war in Korea. During the 1951-52 school year the first pacifist organizations since the outbreak of World War II appeared on campus.

The Pacifist Council—co-chaired by two members of the Class, David Drake ’52 and William T. Vasquez ’52—was the first unofficial group.

Originally consisting of 18 members, the group struggled to find a faculty advisor, which was required for it to become an official club recognized by the College.

It was a “group consist[ing] mainly of pacifists,” Drake told The Crimson at the time, “but as a group it hasn’t decided whether to commit itself to pacifism, or just support other projects conducive to peace.”

The only prerequisite to join the group, Drake explained, was to be a conscientious objection.

And during a time when Communist hunts haunted campuses across the country, he also stressed that the club was not just a group of socialists.

Soon after the development of the Pacifist Council, another group sprouted. Calling itself the Peace Club, it began with eight members—two short of the ten necessary to become an official campus organization—but they did have one advantage: a faculty advisor.

The new club’s constitution—more specific and pointed than the first pacifist group—called for the U.S. to downplay its military policies and use negotiation to settle world conflicts. They demanded “social and economic aid to all countries by the United Nations,” as well as “free international exchange of people and information.”

In an era where public opinion and government officials quickly equated anti-war sentiments with Communist leanings, both groups struggled to find either enough students to join or enough professors to advise them.

When the Pacifist Council asked Russian-born Professor of Psychology Pitirim A. Sorokin to be their consultant, he declined. Even though he had come to the U.S. three decades earlier, he said his Russian background made him an inappropriate choice for the position.

“My sympathies are with them,” Sorokin told The Crimson in February 1952. But “such a job should be held by someone who is a native of his country or who has native parents.”

The Crimson reported several times that the council had finally found a friend in Hollis Professor of Divinity Henry J. Cadbury, but Cadbury continually dodged questions about his involvement.

On one occasion he stated that he was not the group’s advisor but would likely become one when they had “a more definite program of action.”

But later, when the club announced that he had agreed to the position, Cadbury still avoided making conclusive statements about his involvement: “I don’t think that they need a sponsor just yet,” he said.

Altering Academic Life

With service in the armed forces seeming imminent for all Harvard men either during or after their undergraduate careers, the war also threatened to change the shape of the College curriculum.

Harvard instituted a ranking system for the first time so that the University could provide draft boards with academic information about each student.

University President James Bryant Conant ’14 proposed that Harvard alter its curriculum so that students could complete their studies in three years—to save Harvard men both money and time.

Tuition was rising because of inflation, and many men faced years in the Army reserves or in combat before they found permanent employment.

Conant argued that because of “the probability of a prolonged national emergency” students should spend less time in school.

Already tests were in place to exempt students from some first year classes, and Conant foresaw a sped-up academic calendar during the war years.

Though these war-time changes were never implemented, the war did have a profound effect on the makeup of the student population. In 1951-52, the first veteran of the Korean War came to Harvard with his tuition funded by the G.I. Bill.

That year the government announced an extension bill to provide more Korean veterans—not just those who had suffered wounds in combat—with a free education. And having just recently recovered from one global war, Harvard once again prepared to confront darkening world events.