Introduction

The volume celebrating the three-hundred-fiftieth anniversary of Harvard University, Harvard Century: The Making of a University to a Nation, focused extensively on the contribution of Harvard natural scientists' research to the development and eventual deployment of the atom bomb during World War II. But no mention was made of the contribution of the Harvard social scientists in winning WorldWar II.

Other books, while not specifically dealing with Harvard, have given credit to wartime activities of social-science academics. The Politics of Propaganda: The Office of War Information, 1942–1945 occasionally mentioned contributions by Harvard psychologists or historians, although the broader involvement of Harvard personnel in this wartime agency was not discussed. Likewise, Cloak and Gown: Scholars in the Secret War, 1939–1961 analyzed, though not extensively, the contributions of some Harvard as well as Yale professors to government agencies such as the Coordinator of Information Office (COI), the Office of Strategic Services (OSS), and the Office of War Information (OWI). Also, Foreign Intelligence: Research and Analysis in the Office of Strategic Services 1942–1945 has remembered the work of a number of scholars under the directorship of Harvard historian William Langer, though Harvard scholars whoseworkwas discussed in some detail were only the Marxist economists Paul Baran and Paul E. Sweezy.

By and large, evidence concerning Harvard's social scientists' war effort is scarce. Their various projects have not been documented comprehensively in any one monograph.