Education: Cotton Top

“Cotton-Top”

University officials do not like to talk of their affairs until things have actually happened. Even then, Harvard’s elderly President Abbott Lawrence Lowell often refuses to talk directly to the Press. Boston and Cambridge were wondering last week what would be the result of an article in the Boston Globe which purported to reveal the name of the next dean of the faculty of Arts & Sciences—next most important position to that of the president of the University. This week the Harvard Board of Overseers meets to elect a successor to the late Clifford Herschel Moore, who died in Cambridge last month (TIME, Sept. 14). “Persons in close touch with the University,” said the Globe, admitted that the Board would elect Kenneth Ballard Murdock, 36, Harvardman (1916), associate professor of English and master of Harvard’s new Leverett House. Not only that: Professor Murdock, it was said, is being groomed to succeed President Lowell, who might resign (though Harvard stoutly denies it) at the end of this year.

Professor Murdock has been mentioned before as one who has a future at Harvard. Onetime (1919-22) assistant dean of the college, he is the author of two scholarly books on Puritan Increase Mather. He is an able executive, and (like most successful junior savants) he has eschewed the eccentricities which were once almost obligatory to fame. There have clustered about him no such legends as those relating to Charles Townsend (“Copey”) Copeland or bushy-lipped Professor George Harold Edgell of the Fine Arts Department, who sometimes goes bicycling in Edwardian shepherd’s-plaid knickerbockers. Professor Murdock, son of Boston Banker Harold Murdock, is pleasant, humorless, sometimes a bit too easy to convince. His campus nickname: “Cotton-Top.” It is told how a student of his named Sherwood, on the day of an examination, discovered that a lady of the same name (but no relation) had jumped from a window in Manhattan. Student Sherwood clipped the notice, bought a black necktie, went sadly to Professor Murdock. Sympathetic Professor Murdock excused him from the examination.

Observers guessed last week that the Globe’s publicity might do harm to young Professor Murdock. It might make Harvard change its mind. Also, even if Professor Murdock is elected dean, he will have potent rivals for the presidency. Among those spoken of are: Boston Lawyer Charles Pelham Curtis Jr., 36, clubman, sportsman, member of a distinguished Harvard family (but he stutters a bit, a disadvantage in a Harvard president); Secretary of the Navy Charles Francis Adams (he probably would not accept); Professor Francis Bowes Sayre of Harvard Law School, personable son-in-law of the late Woodrow Wilson; Cancer Fighter Clarence Cook (“Pete”) Little, politically ousted president of the University of Michigan; and Professor Samuel Eliot Morison, official Harvard historian (but these two are considered too “advanced”). Meanwhile, tight-lipped President Lowell, who will be one of the seven to vote for his successor, is said to have ”someone” in mind. But he will not tell.