In 2002, Harvard undergraduate student Amit Paley stumbled upon a strange entry in Harvard’s archival database: “Secret Court Files, 1920.” This discovery unearthed a dark and little-known chapter in Harvard’s history—a secret disciplinary tribunal convened in 1920 to investigate and punish students for being “guilty” of homosexuality. Read Amit's original reporting: https://www.thecrimson.com/article/2002/11/21/the-secret-court-of-1920-at/ For a transcript of this episode: https://bit.ly/campusfiles-transcripts To learn more about listener data and our privacy practices visit: https://www.audacyinc.com/privacy-policy Learn more about your ad choices. Visit https://podcastchoices.com/adchoices
Chapter 1: What is the context for Harvard's Secret Court episode?
This episode contains reference to suicide. Please take care while listening. In May 1920, a small town paper in Massachusetts ran a story about the death of a Harvard student named Cyril. Cyril's death was attributed to accidental suffocation. But in truth, Cyril had committed suicide.
Chapter 2: What events led to the formation of Harvard's Secret Court?
His death, and the moments leading up to it, kick-started a series of events at Harvard that would lead to the creation of a secret court, the expulsion of multiple students, and ultimately, another tragic death. For nearly a century, these events remained hidden until a reporter for the Harvard Crimson stumbled upon an archive mysteriously labeled Secret Court.
What he found inside sent shockwaves across campus.
This discovery, because it was something that was meant to be hidden, literally Harvard kept this archive in the closet so that we could not know this part of Harvard's history.
I'm Margo Gray. This week on Campus Files, the suicide of a Harvard student triggers a secretive administrative tribunal so scandalous that Harvard spent decades trying to keep it hidden. Harvard University is a household name. Founded well before the Declaration of Independence, it holds a central place in American history and culture.
Over the centuries, it's been celebrated for its triumphs and hailed as the birthplace of some of the world's most influential leaders. But like any institution of its stature, Harvard has chapters in its history it would prefer to keep hidden.
My name is Timothy Patrick McCarthy. I'm a historian who teaches on the faculty at Harvard. I teach at the Graduate School of Education and the Harvard Kennedy School of Government, where I am the faculty chair of the new global LGBTQI plus human rights program.
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Chapter 3: Who was Cyril Wilcox and why is his story significant?
Tim went to Harvard for undergrad in the early 1990s. He was back there as a professor in 2002 when one of those closely guarded secrets finally came to light, much to the administration's dismay, a student reporter who spent months fighting for access to an archive labeled Secret Court. That secret was uncovered by Amit.
When Harvard finally relented, Amit discovered records of a deeply invasive tribunal led by some of the university's most prominent administrators. This tribunal, known as the Secret Court, was convened after the suicide of Cyril Wilcox, whose tragic story we heard at the start of the episode.
Cyril Wilcox, who was an undergraduate at Harvard at the time, he was on leave, on medical leave from the college, and he committed suicide on May 13th of 1920. The night before he committed suicide, he confessed to his brother that he was actually involved in a homosexual relationship with a man from Boston by the name of Harry Dreyfuss.
Harry was a waiter at a Boston cafe, known to be a popular gathering spot for the city's gay community. Harry was eight years older than Cyril, but they hit it off right away. According to friends, the two were almost inseparable for months. But eventually, things fell apart. Cyril ended the relationship and Harry did not take it well.
He was allegedly so distraught over the breakup that he threatened to out Cyril to Harvard administrators. On the night of May 13th, Cyril confided in his older brother about his relationship with Harry. By the next day, Cyril was dead, leaving his brother heartbroken. The story could very well have ended here, but a letter from a friend arrived for Cyril after he died.
The content of that letter was not only deeply personal, but also highly incriminating.
The brother, who's in mourning perhaps, but also stunned by the revelation of his brother's homosexuality, intercepts a couple of letters that were friends from Harvard who were in the letters detailing parties that they'd had and other kinds of things that they were doing.
One of the letters came from a classmate named Ernest, the son of a prominent state politician.
Dear Cyril, I am a rag. I hadn't heard from Paul for three weeks, or at least it seemed that long until last Saturday.
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Chapter 4: What role did the Secret Court play in the investigation?
The letter from Ernest spanned nine pages and revealed that Cyril had been part of a vibrant, though secretive, gay community at Harvard. Cyril's brother was shocked. He had long believed that Cyril had been coerced into the relationship. But this letter, and another that arrived soon after, painted a very different picture, that Cyril had been a willing, even eager participant.
In the 1920s, sexuality was just beginning to be studied by social scientists. But for most people, sexual activity was still seen through a religious lens, with same-sex relationships considered sinful. Cyril's brother shared that view.
So the brother was so jarred by that, all of that, that he decided to set out to try to find this guy, Harry Dreyfuss, and he found him.
Just over a week after Cyril's death, his older brother showed up at the doorstep of Cyril's ex, Harry Dreyfuss. The details of their conversation remain unclear, but by the end of it, Cyril's brother had a list of allegedly gay Harvard students in hand, and Harry was bloodied and beaten in his own home.
Later that day, armed with letters and names, Cyril's brother went to meet with the dean of Harvard College. What he shared in that meeting led directly to the creation of the Secret Court, a tribunal made up of five influential Harvard administrators.
And what it really was was a kind of ad hoc tribunal that was created to be outside of the normal disciplinary procedures of Harvard College at the time.
In the following weeks, the court would orchestrate a secretive, invasive, and shockingly effective inquisition into the sexual lives of Harvard students. Those students who were unlucky enough to be caught up in it found their lives forever changed.
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Chapter 5: What were the consequences for students involved in the Secret Court?
I expect you, whatever your engagement may be, to appear at my office tomorrow, Friday, May 28th, at 2.45 p.m. If necessary, you are directed to cut a final examination in order to keep this appointment.
Anytime a Harvard student gets a summons from the administration to appear before a disciplinary board, it's a major issue. And it's not one that's welcome in their lives. And these folks didn't even know what they were being called to talk about for the most part.
I'm sure it caused shockwaves through these folks, particularly if these young men were talking to one another and finding out that other people within their social circles and sexual circles in some cases were also being summonsed.
Ernest was the son of a prominent Massachusetts politician. Any trouble at Harvard would lead to embarrassment for his family. So the risk of this summons was enormous.
Harvard was the finishing school for the Boston Brahmin elites. If you were one of those people, and some of these students were from those families, these elite families and so forth, the embarrassment that you were going to bring to your family, right, as someone who was gay or homosexual, would have carried with it an enormous amount of social anxiety and emotion.
Likewise, if you're from a more working class background or a background where you don't have those deep Harvard connections and those highfalutin social statuses, those kids, too, would feel incredibly vulnerable and anxious in a different way, that they finally got in, but now they're going to be kicked out. And that, too, would be an embarrassment to their family.
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Chapter 6: How did the Secret Court's actions come to light?
From the court's perspective, leveling an accusation like this against any student carried risk, but the stakes were much higher when the student in question was the son of a respected politician. In other words, the burden of proof was high. The trouble was, Ernest seemed to be at the heart of it all.
The court knew from the letters that his dorm room was the central meeting point for this entire social circle. So, with commencement just weeks away, the court decided to pursue an intense investigation to secure the evidence they needed.
One of the people that they enlisted to help them with their work, the members of the secret court, was this guy named Windsor Hosmer, who was what we'd call at Harvard proctors. He was a first-year proctor, which is basically like an RA or a resident assistant.
And he was, I think, a graduate student who was enlisted by the secret court to spy on, to basically place under surveillance, Ernest Roberts and other men that were part of this larger community to basically track people. their activities and behaviors over a period of three or four days.
The court gave the proctor three days to monitor Ernest's room, instructing him to report back with the names of everyone who visited.
He was doing this at the request of the secret court. And so, you know, they may not have even known that they were being watched and being tracked in that way.
On deadline, a list of names was delivered, and it mostly matched the names from the two letters that Cyril's brother had submitted to the court. That same day, an anonymous letter arrived addressed to the court. The writer claimed to be a student with knowledge of the circumstances surrounding Cyril's suicide.
While in his freshman year, Cyril met in college some boys, mostly members of his own class, who committed upon him and induced him to commit upon them unnatural acts, which habit so grew on him that realizing he did not have the strength of character enough to break away from it, concluded suicide the only course open to him.
The leader of these students guilty of this deplorable practice and the one directly responsible for Cyril Wilcox's suicide is Ernest. His rooms at Perkins 28, where he and more of his type have, during the past college year, conducted parties that beggar description.
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