Veritas: Harvard College and the American Experience

ISBN-13: 9781566636360 Publisher: Dee, Ivan R. Publisher Publication date: 05/25/2005 Pages: 318 Product dimensions: 6.16(w) x 9.26(h) x 1.21(d) When Josiah Quincy adopted the word veritas (meaning truth) as Harvard's motto in the mid-nineteenth century, he saw the mission of the college as seeking new knowledge in order to come closer to God. It was a radical proposition. The imperatives of veritas are openness, freedom of thought, clash of opinions, resolution, truth-telling. In Veritas, Andrew Schlesinger traces some of the conflicts in Harvard's history between the forces of veritas and the inertial forces, the impediments to truth-sectarianism, statism, aristocracy, racism, sexism, ethnocentrism, the "shackles of ancient discipline." With this theme in mind, Mr. Schlesinger tells the fascinating story of Harvard College as an American institution. He examines the important actions and decisions of its leadership from Puritan times to the present, and provides lively details of it