Hey Professor: What Was Your Harvard Nightlife Like?

Ever wonder what your professors were like during their college years? What about the former Harvard undergrads? Were they Saturday night party-goers or Lamonsters? Bar-
hopping or Widener Stack-shopping? FM inquires into the social lives of a few professors during their years as Harvard undergrads.

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On a typical weekend night during his college years, Fiery A. Cushman ’03, a professor in the Psychology department, could be found in line for pizza at Tommy’s. (The business remains today, although it’s reinvented itself as a convenience store.) Wistful, Cushman recalls the pizza’s trademark sesame seed crust. “Wednesday night through Saturday night, there would be a line around the block,” he says.

Cushman also remembers the Grill, a dive-bar that used to operate where Park Restaurant now stands. “You could write your name on a piece of paper and that was a valid form of ID, so a lot of people were going to the Grill,” Cushman says.

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When David D. Cox ’00, a professor in Harvard’s Molecular and Cellular Biology department, was an undergraduate, he could be found eating in the Loker Commons (now the Cambridge Queen’s Head Pub) or playing Nintendo 64 with his now-wife in his dorm room.

“I guess that’s sort of a social life,” Cox says. “My proudest achievements were getting a C+ in ‘Rome of Augustus’… [and beating] this last level in Donkey Kong 64.”

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Susan E. Mango ’83, a professor in the Harvard Molecular and Cellular Biology department, spent her college weekends at the Orson Welles Theater and the Goethe Institute, watching New Wave films that she would later debate with friends.

She did have one alcohol-fueled night––at a Gilbert and Sullivan-themed waltz. There was “a great deal of champagne,” she recalls. People were “trying to waltz while very tipsy, while the orchestra had given up on the instruments because they were very tipsy. They were all singing their parts. And we were sort of twirling around.”

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Nancy E. Kleckner ’68, a Molecular and Cellular Biology professor, attended Radcliffe in the days before its complete merger with Harvard. She recalls a weekly night in: The House Masters served milk and cookies on Saturday nights, occasionally conducting cozy readings of Shakespeare while Radcliffe students listened in their pajamas.

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Harry R. Lewis ’68 remembers frequenting Paperback Booksmith, a 24-hour bookstore on Brattle Street. “I would go there in the middle of the night and buy books. And then go back to my room and read them.”