Charles William Eliot

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The American educator Charles William Eliot (1834-1926) was president of Harvard from 1869 to 1909 and transformed the college into a modern university.

Born in Boston on March 20, 1834, of a distinguished New England family, Charles W. Eliot graduated from Harvard in 1853. He taught mathematics and chemistry there (1854-1863). He toured Europe (1863-1865), studying chemistry and advanced methods of instruction, and returned to become a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1869, having attracted favorable attention by several articles on educational reform, he was chosen president of Harvard.

Eliot's 40-year tenure permitted him to press slowly but consistently for change. The effect of his innovations was revolutionary and thoroughly altered Harvard. He drew ideas from his European experience, and he later paid tribute to the stimulating effect of the innovations undertaken at Johns Hopkins University under Daniel Coit Gilman.

Eliot developed an organized 3-year program in the law school, using the case system of instruction based on studying actual court decisions rather than abstract principles. In the medical school he introduced laboratory work and written examinations in all subjects, and he gradually made available clinical instruction in Boston hospitals. In 1872 the university began to grant doctoral degrees, and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences was formally organized in 1890, taught by the same faculty that served the undergraduate college.

Eliot's best-known reform was the elective system. Undergraduates could choose from a wide variety of courses in each field rather than follow a prescribed curriculum. By offering many advanced courses to undergraduates, Eliot was able to employ in the college outstanding scholars who divided their time between undergraduate and graduate schools. Harvard became a leading center for graduate study and research and by the 1890s had earned an international reputation for academic excellence.

Always interested in secondary education, Eliot was active in the National Education Association (NEA), becoming president in 1903. He strongly influenced the 1892 report of the NEA "Committee of Ten" that led to the standardization of college preparation and admissions, and he helped found the College Entrance Examination Board in 1906. In 1910 he edited The Harvard Classics, a "five-foot shelf" of outstanding books through which those unable to attend college might acquire a liberal education. He retired in 1909 and died at Northeast Harbor, Maine, on Aug. 22, 1926.

Further Reading

Henry James, Charles W. Eliot: President of Harvard University, 1869-1909 (2 vols., 1930), is the best and most complete biography. Samuel Eliot Morison's two books, The Development of Harvard University since the Inauguration of President Eliot, 1869-1929 (1930) and Three Centuries of Harvard: 1636-1936 (1936), are invaluable on Eliot's work at Harvard. Eliot's view of his profession may be found in his Educational Reform: Essays and Addresses (1898) and University Administration (1908). Charles W. Eliot: The Man and His Beliefs, edited by William Allan Nielsen (2 vols., 1926), is a collection of Eliot's best essays and addresses on a variety of topics.

During Charles Eliot's forty-year tenure as president of Harvard, he helped transform the relatively small college into a modern university and became a leading spokesman for Progressive educational reform in America.

The son of a prominent Bostonian businessman, Charles Eliot entered Harvard in 1849. After graduating second in his class, Eliot became a tutor and was then promoted to assistant professor of mathematics and chemistry. When Harvard did not renew Eliot's appointment in 1863, he traveled to Europe to study. He returned home to accept a professorship at the new Massachusetts Institute of Technology. In 1869 Eliot published a two-part essay in the Atlantic Monthly entitled "The New Education," which solidified his position as an educational reformer and helped him secure a nomination for the presidency of Harvard.

Harvard: from College to University

While Eliot's ideas concerning education brought him the nomination for Harvard's presidency, it also brought great criticism of his possible selection. Clergy dominated the leadership of American higher education, and the college curriculum generally centered on classical studies. Eliot, a thirty-five-year-old scientist, threatened these traditions. Even though his election as president in 1869 was not unanimous, he did not shirk from delineating a reform agenda during his inaugural address. He recommended that Harvard reject the notion of antagonism between classical and scientific studies and proposed, among other things, expanding the curriculum, reforming teaching methods, implementing higher standards, and recognizing individual differences and preferences in education. In short, Eliot presented an outline for Harvard's metamorphosis from college to university.

Eliot understood that graduate and professional education provided an integral part of any true university, and in 1872 his administration created a graduate department. The department, however, failed to have any impact as it did not offer any courses designed specifically for graduate students. In contrast, Johns Hopkins and Cornell provided clear examples of institutions devoted to the university ideal by emphasizing specialization and research. Eliot assimilated many of the philosophies espoused by these universities and used Harvard's resources to develop a stronger graduate program. In 1890 Harvard dropped its graduate department in favor of a graduate school, and offered courses designed specifically for graduate students. At the same time Eliot proposed that professional programs, such as law and medicine, become the arbiters of professional standards. With this in mind, Harvard required a bachelor's degree to enter its top professional schools. This reform encouraged greater scholarship among faculty and students and prompted other institutions to do the same.

Recruiting a Superior Faculty

High-quality graduate education would not be possible without scholars possessing advanced knowledge in their specific fields, so Eliot provided incentives to lure leading professors to Cambridge. During his first year as president Harvard increased faculty salaries from $3,000 to $4,000. Eliot also ignored theological issues when hiring faculty. The opening of Johns Hopkins provided Harvard with a new school from which to hire American Ph.D.'s. Eliot, however, did not stop with hiring the graduates of new universities; he also raided other institutions' faculties, a standard practice in American higher education. In 1880 Eliot promoted the creation of a pension system to encourage the retirement of unproductive employees. Eventually this system expanded to include all faculty members at Harvard. Then, Eliot helped secure a sabbatical year for Harvard professors wishing to focus on scholarship. All of these practices and innovations allowed Harvard to recruit a superior faculty.

The Elective System

Of all the reforms Eliot implemented at Harvard, none brought more renown than the elective system. Ironically, student freedom in choosing classes was not a new controversy. Thomas Jefferson encouraged the practice when founding the University of Virginia, as did other reformers during the 1840s. While the rationale against student choice as expressed in the Yale Report of 1828 still held sway at Northeastern colleges, even Harvard allowed limited student choice when Eliot took office. The university prescribed all freshmen courses, but some options existed for upperclassmen. Eliot, to the dismay of many colleges, proposed a much more radical version of the elective system. He allowed Harvard seniors to choose all their courses, and gradually loosened restrictions on younger students. By 1884 Harvard granted freshmen some choice in course offerings.

Eliot's primary defense of the elective system emphasized the liberty expressed in both the Protestant Reformation and in American political theory. Freedom, he argued, allowed students to develop true growth of character. Individuals possessed God-given propensities that students needed to cultivate in order to fulfill their mission of service after leaving Harvard. In addition, allowing students to choose classes helped expand the curriculum and graduate programs. Electives promoted specialization and encouraged professors to work closely with students in order to push the boundaries of knowledge in their specific field. Finally, by providing students with options Eliot could determine which professors were no longer inspiring students with their subject matter or teaching methods.

Closely related to Eliot's philosophy of freedom in academics was his policy of increased student freedom outside the classroom. Eliot delegated responsibility of student conduct to the dean, and he encouraged relaxing restrictions on pupils. During his tenure as president the student rulebook shrank from forty pages down to five. Eliot also lobbied to remove conduct as a factor in deciphering class rank. Finally, the in loco parentis attitude was challenged with the ending of mandatory class attendance. All these changes signaled the transformation from college to university.

As an Undenominational Institution

In attempting to end the parental role of Harvard, Eliot diminished the school's religious traditions, and he encouraged other institutions to do the same. The president classified Harvard as "undenominational" and contrasted the institution in Cambridge with smaller denominational liberal arts colleges across the country. The analysis, as his detractors complained, carried a condescending tone, yet Eliot continued to advocate a liberal compatibility between science and religion. At the same time, Eliot derided denominational competition, which spawned large numbers of poorly funded and academically questionable sectarian institutions. As he argued for religious reform nationally, he had more difficulty actually implementing his ideas at Harvard. Eventually the institution followed Eliot's recommendations by abolishing compulsory attendance at daily prayers and emphasizing scientific and intellectual pursuits in the Harvard Divinity School. By doing so, Harvard continued to shed its old-time college image in favor of university status.

Admission Practices

Eliot also sought to raise entrance requirements and to provide standardization for admissions practices. He convinced Harvard to accept the College Entrance Examination Board's test for admission. This test provided students across the country with the opportunity to apply to Harvard. A more geographically diverse student population, argued Eliot, gave the school another opportunity to shed its historically provincial recruiting practices.

Eliot's ambivalent statements concerning education for minorities mitigated his reforms in admissions. During a tour of the south in 1909 Eliot publicly supported the region's laws prohibiting miscegenation and also opposed relationships between different ethnic groups of European-Americans. Apparently the influx of Irish in Massachusetts convinced him that the proper way to assimilate minorities was through education alone. At the same time Eliot advocated an appeasement approach toward the acceptance of African Americans and failed to condemn Jim Crow laws in the South. Although Harvard accepted a small minority of African Americans, Eliot conceded that a larger black population in the Northeast would precipitate segregated education. Finally, Eliot proved ambivalent on the question of higher education for women. He supported the teaching activities for women at the "Harvard Annex," and he celebrated the creation of Radcliffe College. This system of coordinate education allowed him to argue that Harvard had not become truly coeducational, while he also advanced the notion that Harvard had accepted its role in educating American women. Still, the Harvard president made numerous comments about the possible dangers of educating women, while advocating further inquiry as to the subjects best suited for women to study. These assertions reveal that Eliot's progressivism, like many other reform efforts at the time, did not include the concept of social justice that developed later in the twentieth century.

Harvard's Democratic Ideals

Harvard had always been charged by its critics as elitist and relatively useless to the common man. Eliot used a number of strategies to change this perception and restore the close relationship Harvard once had with the commonwealth and the nation. First, he modified the mission of "practical" higher education advocated by new state universities. He emphasized the progressive reliance on expert scholars who trained other professionals to function in democratic leadership positions. This elitist attitude offended many, but Eliot sought to assuage that tendency. He understood the growing importance of public image and began distributing literature about Harvard to alumni who worked in the media. He also traveled across the nation to speak on behalf of his institution.

While emphasizing Harvard's "democratic" ideals, Eliot also sought the support of wealthy individuals in order to expand Harvard's offerings. His cordial relations with J. P. Morgan and John D. Rockefeller led to donations that funded the building of the medical school. At the same time, other contributions made the creation of the Graduate School of Business Administration possible. Though funded by the elite, these schools exemplified Eliot's assimilationist tendencies by providing education that would help society at large while avoiding overtly vocational activities. His connections with these "robber barons" and the creation of professional schools offended traditionalists, but allowed Harvard to maintain its status as a leading institution of higher education. Eliot also convinced many of Boston's elite that financial support of Harvard's attempts to become a national university also promoted the status and well-being of their city.

Eliot As a National Figure

As president of America's leading institution of higher education, Charles Eliot implicitly wielded national influence in educational reform. Success of his agenda in Cambridge gave him more freedom as an ambassador of the university to the rest of the nation. As the years of his tenure increased so did his travel and speaking engagements. During his educational speeches Eliot did not limit himself to collegiate reform. He became increasingly interested in secondary education and its relationship to higher education. He and John Tetlow, a secondary educator, formed the New England Association of Colleges and Preparatory Schools. The organization regulated primary and secondary education in the region and became a model for other regional accreditation agencies. He also expanded his leadership role in the National Education Association. In 1892 he chaired the Committee of Ten, a group of scholars who sought to provide guidelines for high school curricula and admissions standards for colleges. The report of the committee helped solidify Eliot's position as a leading educator in America and also coerced reluctant Harvard administrators to accept the standardization of admissions. In this way Eliot's public role in American education provided reciprocal benefit to himself, his institution, and education in general. He remained active in this capacity after he retired as Harvard's president in 1909 until his death in 1926. His nomination as the honorary president of the Progressive Education Association revealed his importance to educational professionals and the general public.

Eliot's reforms at Harvard were not offered in a vacuum. He was part of a much larger reform movement in higher education that included such individuals as Andrew D. White of Cornell, James Angell of Michigan, and Daniel Coit Gilman of Johns Hopkins. Eliot provided an example of a leader willing to modify his views in light of changing evidence. He adjusted his stance on such issues as his advocacy of graduate teaching and research, curriculum matters, and the government's role in education. Although Eliot often appeared condescending to those who opposed his ideas, he provided opportunity for dissent. Occasionally his dissenters won, as evidenced by the failure of his three-year plan for a bachelor's degree, his attempts to merge Massachusetts Institute of Technology with Harvard, and early failures with entrance requirements. As president of the nation's oldest institution of higher education, he implemented reforms at Harvard that eventually became commonplace in educational institutions across the country. As he defended his reforms to the nation he became a well-respected public figure whom many considered the most important educational reformer of his time. Opposing factions often criticized Eliot's actions, but his reforms proved to be lasting changes that continue to shape American education in the twenty-first century.

Bibliography

Eliot, Charles W. 1910a. The Conflict Between Individualism and Collectivism in a Democracy: Three Lectures by Charles W. Eliot. New York: Scribners.

Eliot, Charles W. 1910b. The Durable Satisfactions of Life. New York: Crowell.

Eliot, Charles W. 1924. A Late Harvest; Miscellaneous Papers Written between Eighty and Ninety. Boston: Atlantic Monthly.

Eliot, Charles W. 1971. Charles Eliot: Landscape Architect (1902). New York: Books for Libraries.

Eliot, Charles W., and Neilson, William Allen, eds. 1926. Charles W. Eliot, the Man and His Beliefs, 2 Vols. New York: Harper.

Hawkins, Hugh. 1972. Between Harvard and America: The Educational Leadership of Charles W. Eliot. New York: Oxford University Press.

James, Henry. 1930. Charles W. Eliot: President of Harvard University, 1969 - 1909, 2 Vols. Boston: Houghton Mifflin.

Morison, Samuel Eliot, ed. 1930. The Development of Harvard University since the Inauguration of President Eliot, 1869 - 1929. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

Morison, Samuel Eliot. 1942. Three Centuries of Harvard, 1636 - 1936. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.

— ERIC MOYEN, JASON R. EDWARDS, JOHN R. THELIN

Quotes:

"Be unselfish. That is the first and final commandment for those who would be useful and happy in their usefulness. If you think of yourself only, you cannot develop because you are choking the source of development, which is spiritual expansion through thought for others."

Charles William Eliot
21st President of Harvard University
Term	1869 – 1909
Predecessor	Thomas Hill
Successor	A. Lawrence Lowell
Born	March 20, 1834(1834-03-20) Boston, Massachusetts, USA
Died	August 22, 1926 (aged 92) Northeast Harbor, Maine, USA
Alma mater	Harvard College
Profession	Professor
Religion	Unitarian

Charles William Eliot (March 20, 1834 – August 22, 1926) was an American academic who was selected as Harvard's president in 1869. He transformed the provincial college into the preeminent American research university. Eliot served the longest term as president in the university's history.

Contents 1 Background 2 Eliot's career and the crisis in the College 3 Eliot's legacy 4 Eliot's opposition to football and other sports 5 Notes 6 References 7 External links

Background

The scion of a wealthy Boston family, Eliot graduated from Harvard in 1853. In spite of his high ambitions and his obvious scientific talents, the first fifteen years of Eliot's career were less than auspicious. He was appointed Tutor in Mathematics at Harvard in the fall of 1854 and promoted to Assistant Professor of Mathematics and Chemistry in 1858. He taught competently, wrote some technical pieces on chemical impurities in industrial metals, and busied himself with schemes for the reform of Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School. But his real goal, appointment to the Rumford Professorship of Chemistry, eluded him. This was a particularly bitter blow because of a change in his family's economic circumstances—the failure of his father in the Panic of 1857. Eliot had to face the fact that "he had nothing to look to but his teacher's salary and a legacy left to him by his grandfather Lyman." After a bitter struggle over the Rumford chair, Eliot left Harvard in 1863. His friends assumed that he would "be obliged to cut chemistry and go into business in order to earn a livelihood for his family." But he did not. Instead, he used his grandfather's legacy and a small borrowed sum to spend the next two years traveling in Europe, studying the educational systems of the Old World.

Eliot's approach to investigating European education was unusual. He did not confine his attention to educational institutions, but explored the role of education in every aspect of national life. In France, for example, he questioned "doctors, landladies, servants, and tradespeople over matters that might have appeared to be far removed from his educational inquiries." When Eliot visited schools, he took an interest in every aspect of institutional operation, from curriculum and methods of instruction through physical arrangements and custodial services. But his particular concern was with the relation between education and economic growth:

I have given special attention to the schools here provided for the education of young men for those arts and trades which require some knowledge of scientific principles and their applications, the schools which turn out master workmen, superintendents, and designers for the numerous French industries which demand taste, skill, and special technical instruction. Such schools we need at home. I can't but think that a thorough knowledge of what France has found useful for the development of her resources, may someday enable me to be of use to my country. At this moment, it is humiliating to read the figures which exhibit the increasing importations of all sorts of manufactured goods into America. Especially will it be the interest of Massachusetts to foster by every mean in her power the manufactures which are her main strength.^{[citation needed]}

Eliot understood the interdependence of education and enterprise. In a letter to his cousin Arthur T. Lyman, he discussed the value to the German chemical industry of discoveries made in university laboratories. He also recognized that, while European universities depended on government for support, American institutions would have to draw on the resources of the wealthy. He wrote to his cousin:

Every one of the famous universities of Europe was founded by Princes or privileged classes - every Polytechnic School, which I have visited in France or Germany, has been supported in the main by Government. Now this is not our way of managing these matters of education, and we have not yet found any equivalent, but republican, method of producing the like results. In our generation I hardly expect to see the institutions founded which have produced such results in Europe, and after they are established they do not begin to tell upon the national industries for ten or twenty years. The Puritans thought they must have trained ministers for the Church and they supported Harvard College - when the American people are convinced that they require more competent chemists, engineers, artists, architects, than they now have, they will somehow establish the institutions to train them. In the meantime, freedom and the American spirit of enterprise will do much for us, as in the past ....

While Eliot was in Europe, he was again presented with the opportunity to enter the world of active business. The Merrimack Company, one of the largest textile mills in the United States, tendered him an invitation to become its superintendent. In spite of the urgings of his friends and the attractiveness of what for the time was the enormous salary of $5000 (plus a good house, rent free), Eliot, after giving considerable thought to the offer, turned it down. One of his biographers speculated that he surely realized by this time that he had a strong taste for organizing and administering. This post would have given it scope. He must have felt, even if dimly, that if science interested him, it was not because he was first and last a lover of her laws and generalizations, nor only because the clarity and precision of science was congenial, but because science answered the questions of practical men and conferred knowledge and power upon those who would the labors of their generation. During nearly two years in Europe he had found himself as much fascinated by what he could learn concerning the methods by which science could be made to help industry as by what he discovered about the organization of institutions of learning. He was thinking much about what his own young country needed, and his hopes for the United States took account of industry and commerce as well as the field of academic endeavor. To be the chief executive officer of a particular business only a limited range of influence; but to stand at the intersection of the realm of production and the realm of knowledge offered considerably more.

Eliot's career and the crisis in the College

By the middle of the nineteenth century, American higher education was in crisis. The colleges, controlled by clergymen, continued to embrace classical curricula that had little relevance to an industrializing nation. Few offered courses in the sciences, modern languages, history, or political economy - and only a handful had graduate or professional schools.

As businessmen became increasingly reluctant to send their sons to schools whose curricula offered nothing useful - or to donate money for their support, some educational leaders began exploring ways of making higher education more attractive. Some backed the establishment of specialized schools of science and technology, like Harvard's Lawrence Scientific School, Yale's Sheffield Scientific School, and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Other proposed abandoning the classical curriculum, in favor of more vocational offerings.

Harvard was at the center of this crisis. After three undistinguished short-term clerical presidencies in a ten year period, the college was languishing. Boston's business leaders, many of them Harvard alumni, were pressing for change - though with no clear idea of the kinds of changes they wanted.

On his return to the United States in 1865, Eliot accepted an appointment as Professor of Analytical Chemistry at the newly-founded Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

Early in 1869, Eliot presented his ideas about reforming American higher education in a compelling two-part article, "The New Education," in The Atlantic Monthly, the nation's leading journal of opinion. "We are fighting a wilderness, physical and moral," Eliot declared in setting forth his vision of the American university, "for this fight we must be trained and armed." The articles resonated powerfully with the businessmen who controlled the Harvard Corporation. Shortly after their appearance, merely 35 years old, he was elected as the youngest president in the history of the nation's oldest university.

Eliot’s educational vision incorporated important elements of Unitarian and Emersonian ideas about character development, framed by a pragmatic understanding of the role of higher education in economic and political leadership. His concern in "The New Education" was not merely curriculum, but the ultimate utility of education. A college education could enable a student to make intelligent choices, but should not attempt to provide specialized vocational or technical training. Although technical training should be more explicitly vocational, it should also include instruction in history, languages, political economy, as well as providing a broad knowledge of science and mathematics. Only by differentiating the two levels of the educational process and making each as comprehensive as possible, could higher education hope to prepare students to cope with the rapid pace of technological, economic, and political change. A truly useful education, in Eliot's view, included a commitment to public service, specialized training, and a capacity to change and adapt.^{[citation needed]}

Although his methods were pragmatic, Eliot's ultimate goal, like those of the secularized Puritanism of the Boston elite, was a spiritual one. The spiritual desideratum was not otherworldly. It was embedded in the material world and consisted of measurable progress of the human spirit towards mastery of human intelligence over nature - the "moral and spiritual wilderness." While this mastery depended on each individual fully realizing his capacities, it was ultimately a collective achievement and the product of institutions which established the conditions both for individual and collective achievement. Like the Union victory in the Civil War, triumph over the moral and physical wilderness and the establishment of mastery required a joining of industrial and cultural forces.

While he proposed the reform of professional schools, the development of research faculties, and, in general, a huge broadening of the curriculum, his blueprint for undergraduate education in crucial ways preserved - and even enhanced - its traditional spiritual and character education functions. Echoing Emerson, believed that every individual mind had "its own peculiar constitution". The problem, both in terms of fully developing an individual's capacities and in maximizing his social utility, was to present him with a course of study sufficiently representative so as "to reveal to him, or at least to his teachers and parents, his capacities and tastes." An informed choice once made, the individual might pursue whatever specialized branch of knowledge he found congenial.^{[citation needed]}

But Eliot’s goal went well beyond Emersonian self-actualization for its own sake. Framed by the higher purposes of a research university in the service of the nation, specialized expertise could be harnessed to public purposes. "When the revelation of his own peculiar taste and capacity comes to a young man, let him reverently give it welcome, thank God, and take courage," Eliot declared in his inaugural address:

"Thereafter he knows his way to happy, enthusiastic work, and, God willing, to usefulness and success. The civilization of a people may be inferred from the variety of its tools. There are thousands of years between the stone hatchet and the machine-shop. As tools multiply, each is more ingeniously adapted to its own exclusive purpose. So with the men that make the State. For the individual, concentration, and the highest development of his own peculiar faculty, is the only prudence. But for the State, it is variety, not uniformity, of intellectual product, which is needful."

Eliot did not understate the urgency of the task of educational reform. "As a people," he proclaimed, "we do not apply to mental activities the principle of division of labor; and we have but a halting faith in special training for high professional employments. The vulgar conceit that a Yankee can turn his hand to anything we insensibly carry into high places, where it is preposterous and criminal. We are accustomed to seeing men leap from farm or shop to court-room or pulpit, and we half believe that common men can safely use the seven-league boots of genius. What amount of knowledge and experience do we habitually demand of our lawgivers? What special training do we ordinarily think necessary for our diplomatists? -- although in great emergencies the nation has known where to turn. Only after years of the bitterest experience did we come to believe the professional training of a soldier to be of value in war. This lack of faith in the prophecy of a natural bent, and in the value of a discipline concentrated upon a single object, amounts to a national danger."^{[citation needed]}

Under Eliot's leadership, Harvard adopted an "elective system" which vastly expanded the range of courses offered and permitted undergraduates unrestricted choice in selecting their courses of study - with a view to enabling them to discover their "natural bents" and pursue them into specialized studies. A monumental expansion of Harvard's graduate and professional school and departments facilitated specialization, while at the same time making the university a center for advanced scientific and technological research. Accompanying this was a shift in pedagogy from recitations and lectures towards classes that put students' achievements to the test and, through a revised grading system, rigorously assessed individual performance.

Eliot's legacy

Under Eliot, Harvard became a national institution, recruiting its students from around the country using standardized entrance examination and hiring distinguished scholars from home and abroad. Eliot was an administrative reformer, reorganizing the university's faculty into schools and departments and replacing recitations with lectures and seminars. During his forty year presidency, the university vastly expanded its facilities, with laboratories, libraries, classrooms, and athletic facilities replacing simple colonial structures. Eliot attracted the support of major donors from among the nation's growing plutocracy, making it the wealthiest private university in the world.

Eliot's leadership not only made Harvard the pace-setter for other American colleges and universities, but a major figure in the reform of secondary school education. Both the elite boarding schools, most of them founded during his presidency, and the public high schools shaped their curricula to meet Harvard's demanding standards. Eliot was a key figure in the creation of standardized admissions examinations, as a founding member of the College Entrance Examining Board.

As leader of the nation's wealthiest and best-known university, Eliot was necessarily a celebrated figure whose opinions were sought on a wide variety of matters, from tax policy (he offered the first coherent rationale for the charitable tax exemption) to the intellectual welfare of the general public. He edited the Harvard Classics, which together are colloquially known as his Five Foot Shelf and which were intended at the time to suggest a foundation for informed discourse.

Eliot was a fearless crusader not only for educational reform, but for many of the goals of the progressive movement -- whose most prominent figure head was Theodore Roosevelt (Class of 1880) and most eloquent spokesman was Herbert Croly (Class of 1889). He was also involved in philanthropy, serving as a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation from 1914 to 1917.

Eliot was an articulate opponent of American imperialism and an advocate of racial equality. (Many talented African Americans were educated at Harvard during Eliot's tenure, including such notables as W. E. B. Du Bois (Class of 1890). Booker T. Washington was awarded an honorary degree by Harvard in 1896. Unlike his successor, A. Lawrence Lowell, Eliot opposed efforts to limit the admission of Jews and Roman Catholics.^{[citation needed]}

Though he retired from Harvard's presidency in 1909, Eliot lived until 1926. He is interred in Mount Auburn Cemetery in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

On 27 October 1858, Eliot married Ellen Derby Peabody (1836 - 1869) in Boston. They had four sons, one of whom, Charles Eliot (November 1, 1859-March 25, 1897) was an important landscape architect, responsible for the public park system in Boston. Another son, Samuel Atkins Eliot II (August 24, 1862- October 15, 1950) was a Unitarian minister who became the first and longest-serving president of the American Unitarian Association (1900-1927).

After Ellen Derby Peabody died at the age of 33 of tuberculosis, Eliot married a second wife in 1877, Grace Mellen Hopkinson (1846-1924). This second marriage did not produce any children. However, this was not an ordinary marriage: Grace was a close relative of Frances Stone Hopkinson, wife of Samuel Atkins Eliot II, his son.

Eliot's opposition to football and other sports

During his tenure, Eliot opposed football and tried unsuccessfully to abolish the game at Harvard. In 1905, The New York Times reported that he called it "a fight whose strategy and ethics are those of war", that violation of rules cannot be prevented, that "the weaker man is considered the legitimate prey of the stronger" and that "no sport is wholesome in which ungenerous or mean acts which easily escape detection contribute to victory."^{[citation needed]}

He also made public objections to baseball, basketball, and hockey. He was quoted as saying that Rowing and Tennis were the only clean sports.^[1]

Eliot once said, "Well, this year I'm told the team did well because one pitcher had a fine curve ball. I understand that a curve ball is thrown with a deliberate attempt to deceive. Surely this is not an ability we should want to foster at Harvard."^[2]

Notes

See also: List of Ivy League university presidents

References

1. ^ "ELIOT AGAINST BASKET BALL.; Harvard President Says Rowing and Tennis Are the Only Clean Sports.". New York Times. http://query.nytimes.com/gst/abstract.html?res=9C03E1DE1331E733A2575BC2A9679D946797D6CF. Retrieved 2008-08-09. 
2. ^ Project MUSE at muse.jhu.edu

• Hugh Hawkins. (1972). Between Harvard and America: The Educational Leadership of Charles W. Eliot. New York, NY: Oxford University Press.
• Henry James. (1930). Charles W. Eliot - President of Harvard, 1869-1926. Cambridge, MA: Houghton Mifflin.
• Samuel Eliot Morison. (1936). Three Centuries of Harvard. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• Samuel Eliot Morison (ed.). (1930). The Development of Harvard University, 1869-1929. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press.
• "Football is a fight, says President Eliot. Harvard's Head Vigorously Attacks the Game. Strong Prey on the Weak. Conditions Governing the Sport Dr. Eliot Describes as Hateful & Mean; Wants $2,500,000 Endowment." The New York Times, February 2, 1905, p. 6. Quoted material is verbatim from the Times, but reported by the Times as indirect quotations from Eliot.

External links

Wikisource has original works written by or about: Charles William Eliot

• Brief biography, Columbia Encyclopedia, 6th Edition, 2001.
• Works by Charles William Eliot at Project Gutenberg
• Texts of some of Eliot's most important writings, along with interpretive texts

Academic offices
Preceded by Thomas Hill	President of Harvard University 1869–1909	Succeeded by A. Lawrence Lowell

Persondata
NAME	Eliot, Charles William
ALTERNATIVE NAMES
SHORT DESCRIPTION	President of Harvard
DATE OF BIRTH	1834-03-20
PLACE OF BIRTH	Boston, Massachusetts, USA
DATE OF DEATH	1926-08-22
PLACE OF DEATH	Maine, USA

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