Harkness Lampooned

The Harvard sense of humor is often tinged with sadness. Last week, Harvard men smiled melancholic smiles as they viewed a new issue of the Lampoon, Harvard's funnypaper. The Lampoon had "done it again."

This time it was about Tycoon Edward Stephen Harkness, whose recent gift of $13,000,000 has made possible at Harvard an adaptation of the Oxford "inner, college" idea (TIME, Jan. 7). Sneered the Lampoon: "Now that Harkness has shelled a sufficient number of berries we have got to put on our glad rags and make him an A. M. or a LL. D., the way we did Baker [Tycoon George Fisher Baker built Harvard's Business School in 1924, was given a kudo Ph. D.]. Becoming a Ph. D. is the same kind of business as getting yourself created a movie star, if you get what we mean. . . ."

"Dr. Harkness has made a. noise like Santa Claus, but all the university serfs got out of him was a new set of work-shops."

The Lampoon also mentioned the "intrusive interest of Doctor Harkness. A $13,000,000 shot of cocaine that will whoop things-up for a while. But oh, God, what a morning after there will be. . . ."

The Lampoon's tradition is one of free speech, to the point of libel if need be. In 1925 its artist parodied Washington Crossing the Delaware so daringly that an issue of the Lampoon was barred from the U. S. mails. But the anti-Harkness issue seemed to transcend all Lampoon offenses against good taste and sense, and the reason for this seemed to be that the matter in hand was, for once, serious and tangible.

It was a Harkness gift to Yale which took away from Harvard the latter's famed 47 workshop, a playwriting part of the Fine Arts College embodied in Professor George Pierce Baker. Now another Harkness gift, declined by Yale, is going to refashion Harvard's most ancient and central aspect, oldtime Harvard College, to which the university's graduate schools are comparatively recent and traditionally minor adjuncts. Beneath the Lampoon's youthful vulgarity and ink-intoxicated rudeness there seemed to be a note of genuine bitterness which, since Harvard men are often sad, may have adumbrated some portion of adult Harvard sentiment on the "inner college" plan The Lampoon also said the following:

"After John Harvard has had 293 years of varying success, six weeks of apple sauce bid fair to leave him with nothing but a pair of pants and a coat of copper nitrate. And now that tradition has been blackjacked and thrown into a corner, these innovators are licensed to peddle their synthetic culture to the universities, colleges and preparatory schools. . . ."

The Crimson, dignified Harvard daily, printed an explanation to the effect that a mortgage on the Lampoon's building had been foreclosed by the University authorities, and that the building would become a dining hall in the Harkness project.