the colleges, Britain was the culture. American bounty was ignored. Four Mark Rothko murals hung until they were battered and faded in the dining room of Holyoke Center, a large and absurdly ugly brutalist building just off Harvard Square; now they’re in the Fogg Museum, which at the time had a great collection of 19th-century American painting—Winslow Homers, George Innesses, Frederic Edwin Churches—all rolled up in the attic. Harvard had an indifference to its wealth, too, which was substantial but somehow assumed. My friend Roger Rosenblatt studied literature at Harvard and got fellowship after fellowship. But eventually there was a fellowship he needed that wasn’t going to come through. One of Roger’s instructors said to him, apologetically, “Well, Rog, looks like you’ll have to dip into capital.” It was assumed a Harvard student would have capital to dip into.
The undergraduate houses in those days were class based, on the model of Oxford and Cambridge. Eliot House was for the upper class, the place for boys from Groton or St. Paul’s. If you’d been to Andover or Exeter, it was Lowell House. People from New York City public schools, the few there were, went to Adams House. Winthrop House was far away by the river and for the lower classes. It was like a map of the class structure, but it wasn’t axiomatic. For example, FDR had also lived in Adams House, though that was earlier, and so had John Reed, who is buried in Red Square. Alan Graubard, a very Jewish friend of mine, lived in Eliot House and was called “Mr. Israel” by his house master, John H. Finley Jr., a classicist descended from prominent Episcopalian ministers and public servants. Finley used the nickname not to be unkind—he was a friendly man—but probably in desperation at forgetting Alan’s name. >>>
A distinguished sociologist, George Homans, and I were appointed to investigate these rumors [o drug use] in Kirkland House. We knew that they were true before we even started and George said, “We’re going to have to tell Charles very gently.” He was referring to master of Kirkland, Charles Taylor, an undistinguished professor of history and man of a passing era we both liked. We went into the master’s office for tea, biscuits, and sherry, like they used to serve at Harvard, and before we could say anything he proclaimed: “If I find out that there is marijuana [he pronounced it with the j] in this house, I will cut my throat.” That brought us both up short, so George took over. He began, and began, and began again, and finally the master, who could see what was coming but needed a lifeline, said, “You’re not going to tell me, are you, that so and so does pot?” >>>
https://www.tabletmag.com/sections/arts-letters/articles/christians-and-jews-at-harvard-marty-peretz
