Overview

Harvard’s Department of Social Relations and its audacious goal of creating a new science was a unique experiment in American academia, and its rise and fall is a little-known story. Among its faculty were some of the most eminent social scientists of the time, including some who became notorious for dubious research methods, such as Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert (reborn as Ram Dass), who haphazardly researched the effects of psilocybin on students, and Henry Murray, who traumatized undergraduate Ted Kaczynski (later the Unabomber) in a three-year long abusive psychological experiment. But the real story of the department is a fascinating instructive tale of hubris, ego, and academic politics overlaid on famed sociologist Talcott Parsons’s obsessive quest for an all-encompassing theory of social behavior – the white whale to his Captain Ahab. The idea for Social Relations was hatched in the 1930s. Scorned by traditional interests in their Harvard departments, rising faculty stars in anthropology, sociology and psychology fled their oppressors, seeking to create not merely a new department but a new social science. The refugees were Talcott Parsons, Gordon Allport, Henry Murray, and Clyde Kluckhohn. They promised an interdisciplinary science that would supplant the elder social sciences of history, government, and economics in its ability to explain human behavior. An audacious aspiration, critics found it as imperious as it was implausible. Inspired by the new and controversial works of Sigmund Freud, Carl Jung, Max Weber and Emile Durkheim, the group met clandestinely to plot the bold venture, giving their efforts a conspiratorial air. They called themselves the “Levellers” in recognition of the many levels they believed the study of behavior required. Their big break came when their vision was legitimized by interdisciplinary research during World War II by the Research Branch of the War Department and the Foreign Morale Analysis Division of the Office of War Information. Government agencies employed teams of clinical and social psychologists, cultural anthropologists, and sociologists to study issues important to the war effort, such as assessing the morale of the Japanese, as well as the spirit of our own troops. Twenty-five years later, some at Harvard referred to it facetiously as the Department of “Residual” Relations. The grand experiment had run its course. Failing in its early years to develop a unified theoretical foundation, Social Relations was unwieldy, more multidisciplinary than interdisciplinary. It became a three-ring circus with distinct acts from psychology, sociology, and anthropology. After an early burst of enthusiasm from faculty and graduate students to create a new discipline, hopes faded. The single most ambitious attempt to integrate its component disciplines, the Carnegie Project on Theory and its work product, Toward a General Theory of Action, missed the mark. Without an integrated theory, the department failed to create “social relations” as a new science. The saga engendered controversies that became national, even international, scandals. From the psilocybin “research” of Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert to the infiltration of the teaching staff of the department’s (and one of Harvard’s) largest courses by the radical Students for a Democratic Society, fierce arguments raged about what was a proper subject or method of inquiry and just how far academic freedom should extend.

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"Present on the scene shortly after the demise of Harvard's Department of Social Relations in the 1970s, Patrick Schmidt got the inside view of that remarkable three-decade effort to re-boot American social thought for the postwar world. The nervy founders of ""Social Relations"" imagined that their multidimensional new science could eclipse the hegemony of Economics and explain the workings of welfare-state modernity. Whether deemed noble or delusionary, Social Relations represented one of the great episodes of ""institution-building"" (as Talcott Parsons put it) in the history of mid-20th century US social science. Schmidt's long-awaited book gives us, with insight and verve, the essential narrative of that ambition and its unraveling.--Howard Brick, Louis Evans Professor of History, University of Michigan Schmidt's book is not only an instructive story of intellectual hubris and academic scandal. It also offers insight into ongoing debates over education, knowledge, power and progress.... In the case of Harvard's Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science, the unorthodox approach has borne fruit. Through meticulous research and compelling writing, Schmidt has taken a set of dry, inaccessible institutional records and turned them into a gripping intellectual drama. Best of all, he's managed to do so without sensationalizing his subject or shying away from semantics. A must-read for anyone interested in how educational systems are developed and their effect on the way we view the world.-- ""New Humanist"" This is a story of massive personalities as much as it is intellectual hubris, with luminaries such as Talcott Parsons, Clyde Kluckhohn, and Gordon Allport feeling stifled in their original departmental homes and united by a desire to study ""man as he functions in society"".... Schmidt does not shy away from controversial elements in this intriguing history, and the department had several, especially in the 1960s: from the Students for a Democratic Society launching two classes in the department that covered radical problems with minimal grading, to Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert feeding undergraduates psychedelics as a research project, contentions were the norm... In the midst of all this drama, Schmidt includes photos of key figures, helping to humanize the story. Initially intended as an undergraduate honors thesis, Schmidt's work maintains something of an academic tone, but that's balanced out by academic drama. It is deeply researched, drawing from conversations with people who were active members of the department when it was formed, and Schmidt offers an extensive index plus annotations and a bibliography. This text is a rich resource for future study in the history of related disciplines, and anyone interested in academic history will appreciate this dive into how Harvard scholars attempted, and ultimately failed, to unite disparate disciplines for intellectual and personal reasons. The fascinating history of Harvard's attempts to unify a Department of Social Relations.-- ""Booklife by Publishers Weekly"" Who knew that interdisciplinary academic politics could be so compelling? In this brisk, amusing and intellectually important book, Patrick Schmidt explores the grand ambitions and severe disappointments of one now-disbanded postwar innovation at Harvard. The Department of Social Relations intersected with everything from Timothy Leary's notorious psychedelic drug experiments, to the Unabomber's involvement with an abusive psychology test, to the training and careers of some of the top professors of the 20th Century, including David Riesman, Erik Erikson, Clifford Geertz, Talcott Parsons, David McClelland, Robert Bellah, and Howard Gardner.--Jonathan Alter, Author of ""His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life"" An absorbing account of the rise and fall of a notoriously provocative academic division... It gives readers an engaging glimpse into transformations within post-World War II higher education.-- ""Kirkus Reviews"" An undergraduate thesis, now amplified by correspondence, historical research, and secondary sources, charts the rise and fall of the Department of Social Relations, the revolutionary attempt to create a new interdisciplinary social science. Towering scholars like Talcott Parsons and David Riesman loom large, as do the intellectual stakes--and the personal and institutional factors that brought the department down.-- ""Harvard Magazine"" In the popular Netflix documentary series How to Change Your Mind, host Michael Pollan briefly touches on the academic ecosystem in which psychedelic drugs were studied after LSD was synthesized in Switzerland. A much, much closer look at this ecosystem can be found in... Harvard's Quixotic Pursuit of a New Science[.]-- ""High Times"" Schmidt's lively narrative is an instructive tale of academic infighting, hubris, and scandal.-- ""Across the Margin: The Podcast"" The story of a controversial academic department at an elite university might seem cut off from broader societal concerns, but Patrick Schmidt's excellent book reveals precisely the opposite: how the history of Harvard's Department of Social Relations offers a broad and deep vision of mid-20th century debates over education and knowledge, identity and community, power and progress. A must read for anyone interested in how educational and social systems make and remake our understandings of the world and ourselves.--Benjamin Railton, Director of American Studies, Fitchburg State University"

Present on the scene shortly after the demise of Harvard's Department of Social Relations in the 1970s, Patrick Schmidt got the inside view of that remarkable three-decade effort to re-boot American social thought for the postwar world. The nervy founders of 'Social Relations' imagined that their multidimensional new science could eclipse the hegemony of Economics and explain the workings of welfare-state modernity. Whether deemed noble or delusionary, Social Relations represented one of the great episodes of 'institution-building' (as Talcott Parsons put it) in the history of mid-20th century US social science. Schmidt's long-awaited book gives us, with insight and verve, the essential narrative of that ambition and its unraveling.--Howard Brick, Louis Evans Professor of History, University of Michigan The story of a controversial academic department at an elite university might seem cut off from broader societal concerns, but Patrick Schmidt's excellent book reveals precisely the opposite: how the history of Harvard's Department of Social Relations offers a broad and deep vision of mid-20th century debates over education and knowledge, identity and community, power and progress. A must read for anyone interested in how educational and social systems make and remake our understandings of the world and ourselves.--Ben Railton, Fitchburg State University Who knew that interdisciplinary academic politics could be so compelling? In this brisk, amusing and intellectually important book, Patrick Schmidt explores the grand ambitions and severe disappointments of one now-disbanded postwar innovation at Harvard. The Department of Social Relations intersected with everything from Timothy Leary's notorious psychedelic drug experiments, to the Unabomber's involvement with an abusive psychology test, to the training and careers of some of the top professors of the 20th Century, including David Riesman, Erik Erikson, Clifford Geertz, Talcott Parsons, David McClelland, Robert Bellah, and Howard Gardner.--Jonathan Alter, Author of His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

Present on the scene shortly after the demise of Harvard's Department of Social Relations in the 1970s, Patrick Schmidt got the inside view of that remarkable three-decade effort to re-boot American social thought for the postwar world. The nervy founders of Social Relations imagined that their multidimensional new science could eclipse the hegemony of Economics and explain the workings of welfare-state modernity. Whether deemed noble or delusionary, Social Relations represented one of the great episodes of institution-building (as Talcott Parsons put it) in the history of mid-20th century US social science. Schmidt's long-awaited book gives us, with insight and verve, the essential narrative of that ambition and its unraveling.--Howard Brick, Louis Evans Professor of History, University of Michigan The story of a controversial academic department at an elite university might seem cut off from broader societal concerns, but Patrick Schmidt's excellent book reveals precisely the opposite: how the history of Harvard's Department of Social Relations offers a broad and deep vision of mid-20th century debates over education and knowledge, identity and community, power and progress. A must read for anyone interested in how educational and social systems make and remake our understandings of the world and ourselves.--Benjamin Railton, Director of American Studies, Fitchburg State University Who knew that interdisciplinary academic politics could be so compelling? In this brisk, amusing and intellectually important book, Patrick Schmidt explores the grand ambitions and severe disappointments of one now-disbanded postwar innovation at Harvard. The Department of Social Relations intersected with everything from Timothy Leary's notorious psychedelic drug experiments, to the Unabomber's involvement with an abusive psychology test, to the training and careers of some of the top professors of the 20th Century, including David Riesman, Erik Erikson, Clifford Geertz, Talcott Parsons, David McClelland, Robert Bellah, and Howard Gardner.--Jonathan Alter, Author of His Very Best: Jimmy Carter, a Life

Author Information

Patrick L. Schmidt is an attorney and executive with diverse experience in Latin America and the Caribbean in the areas of renewable energy, finance, real estate, tourism, and infrastructure. He is the author of journal articles and commentary on international law and foreign policy issues including U.S. foreign aid, international human rights, internally displaced persons, and renewable energy in the Caribbean. Schmidt attended Harvard University as an undergraduate where he wrote on the topic of Harvard’s Department of Social Relations in his 1978 senior honors thesis in Harvard’s Department of Psychology and Social Relations, the successor to the Department of Social Relations. As part of his research, he interviewed 26 of the faculty members who played a role in the department’s history, including founders Talcott Parsons and Henry Murray, and critics in the Psychology Department, such as B.F. Skinner, who closely observed the rise and fall of Social Relations.

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