Abbott Lawrence Lowell

U.S. educator, historian, and controversial President of Harvard University (1909–33), Abbott Lawrence Lowell (January 1, 1856–January 6, 1943) was born to Augustus Lowell and his wife Katherine Bigelow Lowell at the family's 10-acre estate in Brookline, MA. The Lowells, a prominent Boston family, affectionately named this estate Sevenels for the fact that there were 7 members in their family. Abbott's siblings included poet Amy Lowell, astronomer Percival Lowell (Harvard 1876), and early activist for prenatal care Elizabeth Lowell Putnam. They were the great-grandchildren of John Lowell (Harvard 1760) and, on their mother's side, the grandchildren of Abbott Lawrence.

Education and Career

A. Lawrence graduated from Harvard College in 1877 with highest honors in mathematics, and from Harvard Law School in 1880. He practiced law from 1880 to 1897 in partnership with his cousin, Francis Cabot Lowell (b. 1855), with whom he wrote Transfer of Stock in Corporations (1884).

Lowell also wrote Essays on Government (1889), Governments and Parties in Continental Europe (2 vols., 1896), Colonial Civil Service (1900; with an account by H. Morse Stephens of the East India College at Haileybury), and The Government of England (2 vols., 1908). In 1897, he became lecturer, and in 1898, professor of government at Harvard. In 1900, he succeeded his father as financial head of the Lowell Institute of Boston. And in 1909, he succeeded Charles William Eliot as president of the university. In the same year, he became president of the American Political Science Association.

As president of Harvard University, Lowell implemented the residential house system and co-founded the Harvard Society of Fellows. He also commissioned his cousin and architect Guy Lowell (Harvard 1892) to build President's House at 17 Quincy St, which remained the residence of succeeding Harvard Presidents until Derek Bok (1971–91) moved his young family into Elmwood (house) in 1971. Lowell also continued pressing for the evolution of "concentrations" (Harvard's name for academic majors), which he had begun to develop while still a professor. His predecessor, Charles W. Eliot, had replaced the single standardized undergraduate course with a plethora of electives; Lowell began encouraging (and eventually requiring) students to concentrate the heft of their studies in some academic field or other.

Lowell's 24 year stewardship over Harvard University is only surpassed by his predecessors Charles William Eliot, serving 40 years at the helm, and Edward Holyoke, serving for 32 years.

Criticism

In recent years, many have denounced Lowell for a wide variety of actions and statements which reflected his apparent bigotry towards homosexuals, Jews, and other ethnic minorities.

The Secret Court of 1920

A 2002 article by Amit R. Paley in The Harvard Crimson exposed Lowell's role in a secret Harvard "court" that expelled eight students and one philosophy Ph.D. candidate for being homosexual or associating with homosexuals. Two of the expelled students, Cyril Wilcox and Ernest Cummings, committed suicide that year. Another, Keith Smerage, killed himself 10 years later.

This compelled Harvard President Lawrence Summers to reflect, more than 80 years after the fact: "These reports of events long ago are extremely disturbing. They are part of a past that we have rightly left behind." Summers apologized, saying "I want to express our deep regret for the way this situation was handled, as well as the anguish the students and their families must have experienced eight decades ago." He continued, "Whatever attitudes may have been prevalent then, persecuting individuals on the basis of sexual orientation is abhorrent and an affront to the values of our university. We are a better and more just community today because those attitudes have changed as much as they have."

Support for an Anti-Semitic Quota

During his presidency, Lowell became disturbed by the rising number of Jewish students at Harvard, feeling that their presence harmed the university's character. As documented in Jerome Karabel's 2005 book The Chosen, Lowell thus urged Harvard to adopt a 15-percent admissions 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."

Racism Against African-Americans

Lowell 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. ^*

Sacco and Vanzetti

Lowell was also involved in the execution of Italian anarchists Sacco and Vanzetti, which many later observers have seen as a miscarriage of justice. As one writes:

"...after all recourse in the Massachusetts courts had failed, Sacco and Vanzetti were sentenced to death. By then the dignity and the words of the two men had turned them into powerful symbols of social justice for many throughout the world. Public agitation on their behalf by radicals, workers, immigrants, and Italians had become international in scope, and many demonstrations in the world's great cities–Paris, London, Mexico City, Buenos Aires–protested the unfairness of their trial. This great public pressure, combined with influential behind-the-scenes interventions, finally persuaded the governor of Massachusetts, Alvan T. Fuller, to consider the question of executive clemency for the two men. He appointed an advisory committee, the 'Lowell Committee,' so-called because its most prominent member was A. Lawrence Lowell, president of Harvard University. The committee...concluded that the trial and judicial process had been just, 'on the whole', and that clemency was not warranted. It only fueled controversy over the fate of the two men, and Harvard, because of Lowell's role, became stigmatized, in the words of one of its alumni, as 'Hangman's House.'" ^*

Opposition to Brandeis Court Appointment Due to Anti-Semitism

Lowell strongly resisted President Woodrow Wilson's appointment of prominent Boston lawyer Louis Brandeis to the Supreme Court. Many have suspected that this was because Brandeis was Jewish -- he ended up becoming the first Jewish member of the Court. Lowell opposed Brandeis despite the fact that he was regarded as one of the most brilliant legal minds in the nation, having graduated from Harvard Law School with the strongest academic record in the school's history.

Lowell wrote the following to President Wilson opposing the nomination:

"An appointment to this court should only be conferred upon a member of the legal profession whose general reputation is as good as his legal attainments are great. We do not believe that Mr. Brandeis has the judicial temperament and capacity which should be required in a Judge of the Supreme Court. His reputation as a lawyer is such that he has not the confidence of the people."

Countering this, Harvard President Emeritus Charles W. Eliot called Brandeis "a learned jurist" endowed with "altruism and public spirit," and said that his rejection would be "a grave misfortune for the whole legal profession, the court, all American business, and the country."

Lowell Still Honored at Harvard

Despite Summers' public apologies for Lowell's hateful behavior, 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 unsuccessfully to have both likenesses removed. ^*

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