Livingston Farrand papers, 1921-1939.
Collection Number: 3-5-7

Livingston Farrand was born in 1867 in Newark, New Jersey. He graduated from Princeton University in 1888, and took an M.D. degree from the College of Physicians and Surgeons in New York. He was an instructor in psychology at Columbia University, and later adjunct professor. Interested in primitive psychology, he joined expeditions to the Pacific northwest with Franz Boas and others, and was appointed professor of anthropology at Columbia in 1903. Farrand was deeply concerned with public health questions, serving as Executive Secretary of the National Association for the Study and Prevention of Tuberculosis from 1905 to 1914. In 1914 he became President of the University of Colorado. In 1917, as director of the Anti-Tuberculosis Commission, he worked in France under the auspices of the International Health Division of the Rockefeller Foundation. His success led to his appointment after the war as chairman of the Central Committee of the American Red Cross. In 1921 he was inaugurated as the fourth president of Cornell University, a position he held until 1937. He died in 1939.

The Livingston Farrand Papers consist of correspondence, office files, reports, letters of transmittal, notices of appointment to committees, scrapbooks, cross reference sheets, clippings, diplomas, and certificates deriving from his presidency of Cornell University from 1921 to 1937. The collection consists chiefly of correspondence, pertaining largely to the routine administration of the President's Office and the University. Subjects include student and faculty issues, student health, athletics, Cornell United Religious Work including arrangements for Sage Chapel preachers, alumni affairs, fraternities, the Cornell-in-China Program, and the University Faculty; also, relations with and the administration of the Law School, the College of Arts and Sciences, the Cornell University Medical College, the College of Engineering, Cornell University Library, the Office of the Comptroller, ROTC, the New York State College of Agriculture, and the New York State Veterinary College, and relations with New York Hospital, the city of Ithaca (N.Y.), the United States Office of Education, the New York State Department of Education, the American Council on Education, the Carnegie Corporation and Carnegie Foundation, the Heckscher Research Council, and the United States War Department. Included is a portfolio of photographs by Lewis W. Hine, created for the American Red Cross during a survey mission from 1918-1919.

Other topics include instances of student malfeasance and scholastic failure, racial discrimination and anti-semitism on campus, concern with communist influence in the educational community, and Farrand's personal interests in eugenics and public health. Major correspondents include Arthur Allen, Howard E. Babcock, Carl Becker, Romeyn Berry, Cornelius Betten, Charles Bostwick, Charles K. Burdick, Foster M. Coffin, L. M. Dennis, R. Louise Fitch, Harold Flack, Frank E. Gannett, William A. Hammond, Frank H. Hiscock, Carl E. Ladd, Albert R. Mann, Archie Palmer, George Rogalsky, Flora Rose, Robert Treman, Allan H. Treman, Myron C. Taylor, Martha van Rensselaer, George F. Warren, and J. DuPratt White.

Also included is a bound typewritten report on the state of Cornell University and its current financial needs as of 1924.

Includes collection #3-5-1353.

Livingston Farrand papers, #3/5/7. Division of Rare and Manuscript Collections, Cornell University Library.