John Usher Munro (1912-2002) Location: 1st-2nd Floor Stairs, Phillips Brooks House Unveiling Date: October 2008 A former dean of Harvard College, John Monro spearheaded Harvard’s efforts to open its doors to lower-income and minority students in the 1960s. He considered ethnic and economic diversity to be just as important as the College’s long history of athletic diversity. Mr. Monro wanted to affect educational opportunities in a more immediate way and on behalf of students who may never have conceived of the opportunity to attend Harvard. In 1967, Mr. Monro left Harvard to serve as a teacher and administrator at the historically black Miles College in Alabama. After 30 years at Miles, he worked at Tougaloo College, also a historically black college located in Mississippi. At the age of 80, the school’s students voted Mr. Monro as the best teacher of Tougaloo College. In 1993, he was presented the Harvard Foundation Humanitarian Award.
Stanley J. Tambiah (1929-2014) Location: Junior Common Room, Kirkland House Unveiling Date: January 2009 Stanley J. Tambiah was the Esther and Sidney Rabb Research Professor of Anthropology at Harvard University. He joined the faculty of the Harvard Anthropology Department as professor in 1976 and conducted extensive research on monastic complexes and temples in Bangkok; political violence in South Asia, and notably the Bombay riots of 1991-92; and transnational movements of people and diaspora communities in an age of “globalization.” Professor Tambiah was recognized for his many contributions to the field of social anthropology and for his incisive and erudite study of Buddhism. He also used his background as a social-anthropologist of Southeast Asia to evaluate whether the Western conceptions of magic, science, and religion are valid analytical categories for comparative studies.