[1] On 15 December 1934, Harvard Trustee and director for the tercentennial celebrations, Jerome Davis Greene (AB 1897), made public the preliminary plans, commencing with the "opening of a special session of the Summer schools in July, 1936 and to reach its climax in ceremonies Sept. 16, 17 and 18".

[6] On 25 December, then-Harvard president James B. Conant (AB 1913, PhD 1916) announced that Thomas W. Lamont (AB 1892) had donated $500,000 to endow the first of the University Professorships, as part of Conant's Three-hundredth Anniversary Fund plan, which "had no intensive campaign and [did not seek any] definite sum"; however, all the money raised would be destined "for professorships and scholarships and none of it for buildings".

[9] That same month, Conant, in his annual report to the Board of Overseers stated: It is perhaps particularly important, in these days when the academic institutions of more than one country have been crippled by persecution, that our anniversary be utilized to demonstrate to the nation at large the significance of all our colleges and universities...We hope that the events of this three hundredth year of Harvard's existence may awaken in many minds a consciousness of the necessity of preserving that great scholarship tradition of education and free inquiry which first came to these shore three centuries ago.

[11] Then-Massachusetts Senator Marcus A. Coolidge introduced legislation to produce a 3 cent stamp, and was not expected to be declined by the Postmaster General.

If Harvard would celebrate its three hundredth anniversary by burning itself to the ground and sowing its site with salt, the ceremony would give me the greatest satisfaction as an example to all the other famous old corrupters of youth, including Yale, Oxford, Cambridge, the Sorbonne, etc.