Why would Harvard have embraced such a man? With everything that was known about the Nazis in 1934 -- their violent anti-Semitism, their book-burning, the concentration camps into which they were herding their enemies -- why would Harvard have treated a Nazi functionary like Hanfstaengl with such courtesy? Why would it let itself be used, in the words of historian Stephen Norwood, "to help cloak the Nazi cause with a layer of legitimacy?" In time, of course, Harvard became staunchly anti-Nazi. (Conant would go on to play a key national defense role during World War II.) But where was its...