Harvard's Secret Court: The Savage 1920 Purge of Campus Homosexuals by William Wright

From Barnes & Noble

In 1920, the suicide of a gay Harvard undergraduate sparked a secret purge of homosexuals on the Cambridge campus. Until the recent discovery of case documents by the staff of the Harvard Crimson, nothing was known about President Abbot Lawrence's closed-door panel and the expulsions and heartbreak that they caused. William Wright's Harvard's Secret Court rescues a suppressed chapter from Ivy League annals. Top-flight scholarship; engaging read.

From the Publisher

In 2002, a researcher for The Harvard Crimson came across a restricted archive labeled "Secret Court Files, 1920." The mystery he uncovered involved a tragic scandal in which Harvard University secretly put a dozen students on trial for homosexuality and then systematically and persistently tried to ruin their lives.

In May of 1920,Cyril Wilcox, a freshman suspended from Harvard, was found sprawled dead on his bed, his room filled with gas--a suicide. The note he left behind revealed his secret life as part of a circle of (cut "young") homosexual students.The resulting witch hunt and the lives it cost remains one of the most shameful episodes in the history of America's premiere university. Supported by legendary Harvard President Lawrence Lowell, Harvard conducted its investigation in secrecy. Several students committed suicide;others had their lives destroyed by an ongoing effort on the part of Harvard to destroy their reputations. Harvard's Secret Court is a deeply moving indictment of the human toll of intolerance and the horrors of injustice that can result when a powerful institution loses its balance.

Publishers Weekly

In this repetitive and somewhat melodramatic narrative, prolific biographer Wright (Born That Way, etc.) tells the astonishing story of a group of Harvard students who were expelled in 1920 for homosexual conduct. After the suicide of Cyril Wilcox, a gay student, Harvard's president authorized a "Secret Court" of deans and scholars to investigate the sexual life of a group of students who often hosted sailors, drag queens and "boys from town" in covert dorm-room dance parties. Fueled by a desire to rid Harvard of homosexuality entirely, the committee's harsh treatment led to the suicide of another student and permanently ruined the careers of a few others. Wright has gotten this story from the proceedings of the court, which-along with personal letters and other documents-survived untouched in a massive classified file in the Harvard archives until 2002, when a reporter from the Harvard Crimson discovered it. Wright's painstaking attention to each student interrogation, family history and Secret Court administrator, along with his distracting authorial commentary, may leave some readers wishing that he had confined this story to a magazine article. Nevertheless, Wright succeeds in compiling a drama that will satisfy readers thirsty for pop-historical scandals from our nation's unregenerate past. (Oct.) Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Kirkus Reviews

A vibrant homosexual subculture thrived on Harvard's campus in the 1920s until a suicide prompted a witch-hunt, kept under wraps for 80 years. In 1920, an undergraduate at Harvard University, Cyril Wilcox, took his life. In the days thereafter, his brother came into possession of letters that made it plain Wilcox was part of a vigorous homosexual community. Wilcox's brother took the letters to the Harvard administration, demanding action. Wright (Born That Way, 1998) exposes the venom unleashed by the college. It is the "why" that vexes Wright. Here was Harvard's president Lowell-brother of renowned lesbian poet Amy Lowell-a man who could bring a cultured hand to the situation: calm, humane, discreet, experienced. Why did he act like an ox? Surely the secret court was not so naive as to believe homosexuality was a rare isotope. Homosexuality was part of Harvard campus life: undergraduates, grad students, faculty and staff. Wright is agog at the court's overreaction. The court, but Lowell in particular, treated the circumstances as if they were some contagious evil. Why would these urbane, well-traveled, educated men believe this poppycock? Wright suggests some sensible conjectures: that homosexuality was still considered depraved, if not a sin, and if Harvard was a bastion of rectitude, if it couldn't be quashed there, then where? And the burgeoning polyglot student body, did this too represent the status quo under siege? The consequences were dire; more suicides followed the inquisition, and Harvard continued to smear the accused for years thereafter. While some of the author's comments fail to mesh ("freshmen," he writes, "were cowed by the majestic university that had deigned toaccept them," though earlier he notes that "until the 1960s it was as easy to enter [Harvard] as any other college"), they don't take away from the narrative. Harvard betrays itself and Wright's restrained telling staples a condemnation square on the school's forehead.

Product Details

• ISBN: 0312322712
  
• ISBN-13: 9780312322717
• Format: Hardcover, 304pp
• Publisher: St. Martin's Press
• Pub. Date: October 2005
• Sales Rank: 698,617

• Table of Contents

Table of Contents