Harvard University: Secret Court, 1920, Revelations and Interpretations

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Continued from: Harvard University: Secret Court, 1920, Witnesses and Other Parties


Revelations and Interpretations

In 2002, a researcher from The Harvard Crimson, the school's undergraduate daily newspaper, came across a box of files labeled "Secret Court" in the University Archives. After a protracted campaign on the part of the paper's staff, the university released five hundred documents relating to the Court's work.


Paley's Article

An article by Amit R. Paley in The Crimson's weekly magazine Fifteen Minutes reported the 1920 events on November 21, 2002. Though the University insisted on redacting the names of those under investigation, six researchers at the paper were able to identify most through research in other records.[1]


Summers' Statement

Harvard University's President Lawrence H. Summers responded to that story with these words:

These reports of events long ago are extremely disturbing. They are part of a past that we have rightly left behind. I want to express our deep regret for the way this situation was handled, as well as the anguish the students and their families must have experienced eight decades ago. Whatever attitudes may have been prevalent then, persecuting individuals on the basis of sexual orientation is abhorrent and an affront to the values of our university. We are a better and more just community today because those attitudes have changed as much as they have.[2]


Crimson Editorial

An editorial in The Crimson two weeks later called on the university to grant "posthumous honorary degrees" to those expelled and not allowed to return. It also charged that by failing to reveal the names of the students involved "the University implies that they were accused of some legitimate transgression."[3]


Gladden J. Pappin's Letter

In a letter to the editor the next week, Gladden J. Pappin, a Harvard junior and editor of a conservative campus magazine, the Harvard Salient, objected to the editorial's proposed degrees and called the Court's work "a very appropriate disciplinary move."


He also called for the administration to "reestablish standards of morality" and punish violators, noting that "Such punishments would apply to heterosexuals, of course, but even more so to homosexuals, whose activities are not merely immoral but perverted and unnatural."


Patrick Buchanan's Statement

In a similar vein, Patrick Buchanan wrote: "Harvard appears to have quietly expelled a few deviates while avoiding a public scandal that would have ruined their reputations and damaged Harvard’s good name. What did Harvard do wrong? ...Harvard has not only turned its back on its Christian past, it has just renounced its Christian roots as poisoned and perverted."[4]


Harvard's Secret Court by William Wright. 2005

A book-length study of the Court's work appeared in 2005, Harvard's Secret Court, by William Wright. More of a popular dramatization than a history, it recounts the Court's work in considerable detail, but also includes imagined conversations and considerable speculation. Where only the notes of an interrogation survive, the author reconstructs the questions and even characterizes the tone of voice of the questioners.


Allen Helms reviewed the Wright book in the Boston Globe Book Review, mentioning "unattributed quotations" and "ambiguous referents" and called the book "riddled with contradictions." He summarized his assessment with these words: "inherently fascinating, sloppy, largely well written, sometimes inaccurate, and wholly maddening." [5]


Michael Van Devere's Film: 2008

In 2008, Michael Van Devere wrote, produced, and directed a different kind of dramatization: a film based on the Court's work called Perkins 28: Testimony from the Secret Court Files of 1920. The film consists of re-enactments of nine of the Court's interrogation sessions and uses a cast of Harvard undergraduates. The screenplay uses the Court's documents as its starting point.[6]


Their Day in the Yard, 2010

In 2010 a movement called "Their Day in the Yard," aiming to petition Harvard University to grant posthumous honorary degrees to the expelled students, launched a Facebook page and a website.[7]


Stage Works

Two stage works dramatizing the Court and the affected students have been presented in New York.


In 2010, VERITAS, by Stan Richardson, was presented at the New York International Fringe Festival,[8]


In 2011 Classic Stage Company presented Unnatural Acts: Harvard's Secret Court of 1920, conceived by Tony Speciale and created by members of the Plastic Theatre.[9]


Return to the first entry in this series: Harvard University: Secret Court, 1920

Notes

  1. ↑ Harvard Crimson: Amit R. Paley, "The Secret Court of 1920, Part III," November 21, 2002, accessed December 18, 2009
  2. ↑ Washington Post: "Harvard Secret Court Expelled Gay Students in 1920," December 1, 2002, accessed December 17, 2009
  3. ↑ Harvard Crimson: "An 82-Year-Old Mistake," December 6, 2002, accessed December 24, 2009
  4. ↑ Harvard Crimson: Gladden J. Pappin, "Secret Court Rightly Punished Immorality," December 9, 2002, accessed December 25, 2009; Harvard Crimson: Elizabeth W. Green, "People in the News: Gladden J. Pappin '04," June 5, 2003, accessed December 24, 2009. See also: Harvard Crimson: Sarah M. Seltzer, "Letter Draws Students’ Anger," December 12, 2002, accessed December 24, 2009; Harvard Crimson: Daniel J. Hemel, "Salient Board Aims For Moderation," September 23, 2003, accessed December 24, 2009; Patrick J. Buchanan: "Harvard Embraces Bathhouse Values," December 4, 2002, accessed December 27, 2009.
  5. ↑ Boston Globe: Alan Helms, "A shameful episode in Harvard history," Book Review, November 27, 2005, accessed December 19, 2009. See also: Harvard Crimson: "Writing the Wrong," November 3, 2005, accessed February 24, 2010
  6. ↑ The Harvard Crimson: "Silenced Voices Finally Speak Out in 'Perkins 28'," November 13, 2008, accessed December 17, 2009
  7. ↑ Their Day in the Yard: "About", accessed June 4, 2010
  8. ↑ New York Times: Steven McElroy, "Fringe Festival: The Edge, the Center and the Kitchen Sink," August 12, 2010, accessed June 25, 2011
  9. ↑ New York Times: Ben Brantley, "Behind the Closed Doors of Harvard, 91 Years Ago," June 23, 2011, accessed June 25, 2010
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