Oscar Handlin and the Warren Center:

Recollections by Bernard Bailyn

           Of all of Oscar Handlin’s extracurricular activities – and it’s hard to believe how many there were: Fulbright commissioner, interim director of the Harvard University Press, University Librarian, consultant to Congress on immigration reform, TV and newspaper commentator, all this besides regular undergraduate lecturing and directing 80 doctoral dissertations – the most creative and enduring was his creation and long-term directorship of the Warren Center for Studies in American History.

            It really was his invention. The Warren fund, left in 1965 to the University for the enrichment of the study of American history by a loyal alumnus fearful that the true spirit of American history was being corrupted by materialist interpretations, mentioned fellowships, professorships and the support of Americana in the library but not a center for the advanced study of American history. That was Oscar’s idea, developed in consultation with President Pusey, certain overseers, and colleagues. He wanted Harvard to be a national center for American history, to use the funds to bring scholars here from all the universities in the U.S., to support the research of our own Americanists and graduate students, and to help shape the development of the field. By 1965 Handlin’s reputation, accomplishments, and prestige were enormous, and he brought the administration and his colleagues around, step by step, to the specific program he had in mind.

            There would be residential fellowships for scholars from elsewhere – anywhere – whose scholarship was creative and who could profit from the use of Harvard’s libraries. The Center would subsidize in various ways the work of Harvard’s faculty and graduate students. It would be managed by an Administrative Committee consisting of the senior professors in American history, with one faculty member from a different department, and engage in interdisciplinary work only insofar as it was based on historical principles. And above all, the Center would sponsor its own research and publication projects. To accomplish this, each member of the Committee would take responsibility for one of the Center’s projects and devote the equivalent of a summer’s working time to it. It was on these lines, in 1966, that the Center opened its doors.

            I can’t imagine how Oscar managed to get the building at 53 Church Street for the Center, but he did. Though then shabby and in need of interior rebuilding, it was prime Harvard real estate. There, in newly built office space and meeting rooms, the Center began its work.

            Oscar himself, with the wonderful assistance of his wife Mary, took on as his responsibility the management of the Center, the supervision of the fellowships, and the organization and conduct of its meetings. Frank Freidel, with an assistant, took on the task of turning out a new, comprehensive third edition of the Harvard Guide to American History – which proved to be the last letter-press bibliography before the advent of the internet. Donal Fleming and I took on the editing and publishing of an annual collection of research monographs, Perspectives in American History, too large for journal publication but not large enough for book publication. And Ernest May took responsibility for the research and publication of several projects in the general area of diplomacy and international relations.

            We went to work, under Oscar’s aegis, with the zest and energy that now seems incredible, given that we were all teaching full time and doing our own research and publishing. But there were glitches from the start. The first lunch that I can remember, recorded in the picture attached, shows the administrative committee seated and the staff and the first fellows standing (among whom are Neil Harris, Chicago now emeritus; Stanley Katz, ACLS, now Princeton; Gordon Wood, Brown, emeritus; the late William Hutchison, Harvard Divinity School; and Richard Buel, Wesleyan, emeritus; Mary Handlin is standing behind me, on the left). The lunch, catered, was lavish: some fruit, a solid meat course, salad and dessert, served with red wine. The presentation of the paper that day was by a distinguished Japanese Americanist of great prestige here and abroad. After the table was cleared he began his talk, and Oscar fell sound asleep.  I was afraid that if I kicked him he might wake up with an embarrassing snort. If I didn’t, he might begin to snore. In either case we would have a mortifying intercultural event. So I prayed instead, and we got through it without interruption, after which Oscar warmly thanked the visitor for his thoughtful remarks.

Charles Warren Center for Studies in American History, 1966-67

Seated, 1-r: Bernard Bailyn, Frank Freidel, Paul Buck, Donald Fleming, Oscar Handlin, Ernest May
Standing, 1-r: William Hutchison, Kathryn Preyer, Mary Handlin, Katharine Topp, Paula Cronin, Stanley Katz, Sheila Madden, Barbara Falcon, Gordon Wood, Mimi Drain, Neil Harris, Claudia Crispin, next two unidentified, Richard Buel, Barry Karl, P.M.G. Harris, John Riggs, Carol Thorne, Richard Showman, Ralph Goodwin, Andreas Burckhardt, Judy Ryerson

           The Harvard Guide proved to be an albatross, a task that lasted at least seven years and involved a phalanx of graduate students carefully filing three by five slips of titles under Freidel’s direction. After some years at the task Freidel’s control of the project grew slack, and there were whispers – I never knew the truth – that some of the bored graduate students were slipping in fake entries that would be discovered only when the two volumes would appear in print – a paper, for example, on “Cowhide in the Conquest of Mexico,” in the Quarterly Journal of Animal  Obstetrics. For some time after the Guide’s publication I opened the book with a bit of apprehension and still am prepared for the worst.

            Fleming and I worked feverishly to get Perspectives out on time. Incredible to say we were our own publisher. That is, we selected the monographs, edited them, prepared them for publication, sent out notices and ads, hired a printer, got up our own subscription list, and managed the distribution of the volumes. The two of us kept this up for ten years until finally I gave up and Fleming took over for another five years, at times with the help of Stephen Thernstrom. I’m proud of those volumes, at least three of which were republished as hard-cover books; one of them, The Intellectual Migration, Europe and America, 1930-1960, opened up a new field of investigation. But it was a struggle. With only one editorial assistant at any one time (Pat Denault managed six of the volumes) we fell behind the announced schedule, couldn’t keep the subscription list straight, found the cost of printing prohibitive, and finally had to hand the publication of the volumes over to a university press, whose printing schedule we repeatedly missed.

            Oscar kept us going. He was indefatigable and undaunted by all the complications. To assist the Commonwealth of Massachusetts in its celebration of the bicentennial of the American Revolution, Oscar somehow managed to extract a grant from the State for the Center’s publication of three volumes of documents of Massachusetts’s engagement in the Revolution drawn from state archives. I have an amusing picture of a beaming Oscar sitting with Governor Volpe and various legislators, with me and the editor of the documents, Professor Kinvin Wroth, standing uneasily in the rear. Not surprisingly we fell behind on the project and by the time the three volumes appeared in print and in fiche certain state authorities had begun hinting that Harvard had made off with the tax payers’ money with no visible result and were threatening to go public.  Wroth picked up the pace.

            The projects piled up, the publications appeared. It was all intense, productive, and worthy. But in time Oscar’s specific plans faltered. The Center with all its activities couldn’t be sustained in quite the way he had hoped. The Center’s funds, some of which were drawn off by the Deans no doubt for good purposes related to American History, declined, and a new contract with the FAS had to be negotiated at a lower level of support.  The addition of two new professors of American History, Stephen Thernstrom and David Donald, who had not signed on for major commitments at the Center, complicated the role of the administrative committee. And at the same time the boundaries of American History had so far broadened by new interests and by relevant work in adjoining fields that the membership of the Administrative Committee had to be expanded to include faculty members at different levels and projects in different fields and in different departments.

            But the essence of Oscar’s vision remains. The Center – now broader, more expansive in its reach than it once was – remains, as he hoped it would,  a national center for the advanced  study of American history; it brings together scholars from other universities to work and collaborate on themes defined by members of the enlarged administrative committee; and it presents the work of its members in open meetings for the benefit of the academic public. The Center may not be what it once was and everything that Oscar had hoped it would be, but he  knew what he was doing.