HARVARD'S QUIXOTIC PURSUIT OF A NEW SCIENCE

A history of an influential, now-defunct Harvard University department.

Harvard’s Department of Social Relations was home to some of the 20th century’s most important (and controversial) social scientists, including sociologist David Riesman and psychologist Timothy Leary, and left behind a mixed record during its existence between 1946 and 1972. Its graduates, such as anthropologist Clifford Geertz, revolutionized social science, while its faculty engaged in some of the most ethically problematic research experiments of the 1950s and ’60s. The formation of the department marked a turning point in the history of American universities, as Harvard, then a bastion of stodgy traditionalism, became the nation’s first university to embrace a truly interdisciplinary department—one that integrated diverse fields, from sociology and anthropology to clinical and social psychology. As such, this book is just as much an intellectual history of mid-20th-century social scientists as it is an institutional history of a relic of Harvard’s past. Although the department struggled with “the realities of an academic world stubbornly structured around traditional disciplines,” the actions of its more radical faculty often attracted unwanted publicity and scandal. For example, Leary and Richard Alpert (later known as Ram Dass) gave student test subjects psychedelic drugs in their infamous “Good Friday Experiment.” Psychologist Henry Murray’s research on extreme stress subjected Harvard students to horrifying verbal abuse; the traumatized undergraduate victims included Ted Kaczynski, who would later target research universities as the Unabomber. Originally written as an undergraduate honors thesis during author Schmidt’s Harvard studies more than four decades ago, the book is largely based on firsthand interviews of the department’s faculty. Updated to include more contemporary scholarship, and with a firm command over the diverse interdisciplinary literature that emerged from the department, this is an extremely well-researched book with more than 70 pages of endnotes and bibliographic references. It gives readers an engaging glimpse into transformations within post–World War II higher education.

An absorbing account of the rise and fall of a notoriously provocative academic division.