History of Harvard University "official philosophy" of the more empirical and more deistic Scottish school. Between 1830 and 1870, Harvard became "privatized". While the Federalists controlled state government, Harvard had prospered and the 1824 defeat of the Federalist Party in Massachusetts allowed the renascent Democratic-Republicans to block state funding of private universities. By 1870, the politicians and ministers that heretofore had made up the university's board of overseers had been replaced by Harvard alumni drawn from Boston's upper-class business and professional community and funded by private endowment. During this period, Harvard experienced unparalleled growth that securely placed it financially in a league of its
History of Harvard University and most of the latent antisemitism had faded away. Policies of exclusion were not limited to religious minorities. In 1920, "Harvard University maliciously persecuted and harassed" those it believed to be gay via a "Secret Court" led by President Lowell. Summoned at the behest of a wealthy alumnus, the inquisitions and expulsions carried out by this tribunal, in conjunction with the "vindictive tenacity of the university in ensuring that the stigmatization of the expelled students would persist throughout their productive lives" led to two suicides. Harvard President Lawrence Summers characterized the 1920 episode as "part of a past that we