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Harlow Gale, pictured in 1896, taught psychology at the University of Minnesota from 1894 to 1903. PHOTOGRAPHS COURTESY OF UNIVERSITY ARCHIVES

In the spring of 1895, first-year professor Harlow Gale decided to give a lecture on sexual instincts to his psychology class at the University of Minnesota. Gale understood that he was stepping on tenuous ground with this subject—sexual psychology had never been a part of U of M instruction before—so he took the time to inform President Cyrus Northrop of his intentions. Either Gale was not explicit about what he was doing or the content of his upcoming lecture failed to register with the president. Northrop gave his consent with his “characteristic passive acquiescence,” Gale later wrote. Meaning he didn’t pay much attention—at first.

Gale had arrived at the University of Minnesota campus with a continental education in psychology and enthusiastic ideas about how he might employ it while teaching at the U. His psych studies—and the fact that they were conducted in Leipzig, Germany—put Gale at the forefront of progressive education in 1894, the year he landed in the U’s Department of Philosophy, where the study of psychology was housed. Gale was poised from the start to butt heads with some solidly 19th-century notions about how the sons and daughters of Minnesota ought to be educated. And the champions of those ideas were unimpressed by Gale’s progressive thinking and that German education.

Despite a certain naïveté about the workings of a state university, Harlow Gale was no kid when he arrived at the U. Born to a well-heeled Minneapolis family in 1862, Gale had gone off to Yale for his undergraduate degree, returned to Minneapolis for a couple years of graduate studies in economics, and then went back to Yale to study philosophy. His three-and-a-half-year sojourn in Germany began in 1890, when he was 28 years old, and included research in physiological psychology, nervous disorders, and experimental psychology.

It was as an instructor in this last subject that he was hired at Minnesota. Gale replaced the University’s only other faculty member in psychology and quickly set up a laboratory for himself and his students. He began instruction in physiological psychology, child psychology, the psychology of sense and feeling, and the study of the psychology of advertising—a course that was the first of its kind in the nation.

Gale was devoted to scientific reasoning and expanding the minds of his students through experimentation, demonstration, and Socratic methods that encouraged interchange between instructors and students. The University of Minnesota of that day was inching slowly toward the type of classroom that Gale created, but it still was heavily influenced by a 19th-century style of instruction that emphasized classical subjects (Latin, Greek, mathematics, and philosophy), rote learning, and a reliance on metaphysics rather than science to address the bewildering questions that inevitably arose in scholarly pursuits. Some answers were to be left in God’s hands, a notion that students were expected to understand.

Matters like history, economics, literature, and psychology were new to the curriculum. So, too, was the sense that students might have minds of their own. Religiosity infused the University (as evidenced by those metaphysical leanings). It galled Harlow Gale as much for the dose of hypocrisy with which it was administered as for its presence at a public institution of higher learning. Faculty meetings opened with a prayer at which, Gale wrote, “Only half a dozen of the veteran professors joined in . . . with any sincerity.”

Leading the faculty in these sessions, and probably oblivious to the lack of devotion around him, was University President Cyrus Northrop. Hired as the University’s second president in the wake of William Folwell’s tumultuous administration, Northrop arrived at the U from a professorship at Yale. His assignment was to build the University and make peace between it and the various powers in the state that held influence over its course, including the Board of Regents, the state government, and the population in general. Northrop was a consummate political animal and proved successful in this role. “He endeared himself to the people, won support from every group, and as the years went by became the most beloved of all Minnesotans,” wrote Minnesota historian Theodore Blegen of Northrop.

Despite these gifts, Northrop had a few blind spots when it came to administering the University. He was far less inclined to be interested in the pedagogical theories of a young professor like Harlow Gale than he was in making sure the parents of some freshman from the piney woods of northern Minnesota felt their child would be safe and sound at the U.

Gale had known Cyrus Northrop for years prior to being hired at the U of M. Northrop attended the same Minneapolis Congregational Church as Gale’s mother and had actually taught Gale when he was a young student at Yale. To Gale, this last link was not a point in the president’s favor. In his estimation, Northrop’s teaching had epitomized a style designed to hammer home dull lessons “in the quickest and easiest way” possible.

Given Northrop’s political sensitivities and Gale’s stubborn idealism, it was probably inevitable that the two would clash. It happened first over the sex lecture.

Beginning with an explanation of the anatomy “of the powerful sexual centers,” Gale’s talk outlined “the sensations, feelings, and emotions” that arose from these centers and manifested themselves in “the vague longings and unrest” that come to humans with puberty. In other words, with a heavy emphasis on nerves and psychological anatomy, Gale was giving “The Talk” to his college underclassmen.

With a quick diversion into the “manifold psychological disturbances” caused by the repression of these sexual emotions (the famed Austro-German psychiatrist Richard Krafft-Ebing’s book Psychopathia Sexuelis was one of the primary sources for the lecture), Gale finished his discussion by underscoring for his students that the most sublime expression of sexual emotions came through marriage. “The highest function of sex life was opposed to the gratification of temporary relations or promiscuous intercourse,” he told them. Sexual ecstasy between man and wife, on the other hand, “brought [men and women] nearer together in giving an increased fullness, depth, and richness to their highest aesthetic and ethical sympathies.”

The talk came and went—surprisingly smoothly, thought Gale—and an entire year passed. He decided that, since a number of his students appreciated his lecture, and no one had objected, he’d do it again. He proceeded to give the same lecture in his second year of teaching. But this time a couple of new students—“YMCA zealots,” in Gale’s description—were left open-mouthed by their psychology professor’s frank discussion of human sexuality and rushed off to Northrop’s office to tattle.

Suddenly, the University president was fully cognizant of the implications of his psychology professor’s lecture and, according to Gale, he flipped. “Armed with a written report of these alarmists,” Gale wrote, “the president suddenly appeared in my study, out of breath and in tremendous excitement, to demand what I meant by all this scandal. He shouted [while pounding the table] that I had done more harm to the university than I could ever live to undo, that the rumors of this talk would spread like wildfire throughout the state, that he would never hear the end of it, and that the people of the state didn’t send their

University President Cyrus Northrop, pictured in 1910.

boys and girls to the university to hear such irreligious corruption.”

Gale tried to explain himself, but Northrop was so exorcised that “no calm discussion with the president was possible,” Gale recorded. Northrop stormed back out of the office, leaving his psychology professor to contemplate his fate.

For the next few weeks, rumors of the notorious “sex talk” floated around the campus but Gale heard nothing from the president. In his own defense, Gale sought out an unidentified regent and described the lecture. He was heartened to hear the man agree with “the facts and views” as presented by Gale but then was chagrined when he was also told “that a university is not the place to teach many kinds of truths.” Among them, obviously, were those pertaining to sexual instincts.

A couple of months after Northrop had burst into his office, the president informed Gale that his contract with the U was not being renewed. Gale asked for and received an opportunity to plead his case before a special faculty meeting, where he learned that aside from his frank discussion of sex, Gale was being assailed also for his manner of instruction. It was too “materialistic,” according to his critics. It lacked metaphysical overtones. It lacked a sense of the soul.

Gale offered an impassioned defense of his teaching methods and boldly stated that it was through science and reasoning that educational advances had been made in the last half century. He also promised not to give “The Talk” again to his students, and it was probably this fact, more than his passion, that got Gale his job back.

With this reprieve, Gale went about building a noteworthy, but brief, scholarly career at the University. Gale’s study of advertising and its effects, which he published in an article titled “The Psychology of Advertising” in 1900, was the first time a psychology laboratory was used to examine the influences of advertising on consumers in a scientific fashion. These pioneering studies have recently caught the attention of John Eighmey, chair of the U of M’s School of Journalism and Mass Communication. Eighmey and graduate student Sela Sar have actually reenacted one of Gale’s early experiments in a class of Eighmey’s and written a paper on Gale and his work that will soon be published in The Journal of Advertising.

In addition, Gale was a devotee and scholar of classical music and wrote music criticism, beginning in 1903, for a local publication, The Minneapolis Daily News. And he and the extended Gale family helped build an aesthetic appreciation for both symphonic and chamber music in the city of Minneapolis. Professor Emeritus Robert Laudon of the U of M’s School of Music saluted Harlow and family in a 1997 book called Gales of Music, which describes the family’s involvement in the local development of classical music.

All well and good, but Harlow Gale’s difficulties weren’t behind him. With his “materialism” and his demonstrated inclination to discuss sex in the classroom, Gale had left Cyrus Northrop’s “circle of trust” and trouble quickly resurfaced. Two years after the first dismissal, Gale was let go again, this time because of intradepartmental strife.

The chair of the philosophy department was an ally of President Northrop’s, and Gale’s hope was that by branching off into its own separate department, psychology could pursue its scientific course and leave the metaphysics to philosophy. This very thing was being done at universities across the nation. Gale, however, made the strategic mistake of going around Northrop’s back to petition the Board of Regents directly.

Gale described Northrop, in a face-to-face confrontation with him, as breathing fire: “??You thought you’d got this scheme fixed up with the regents and could work it thru independent of me, did you?” Gale quoted Northrop, “I’ll let you know that I’m running this university.”

Nor had Northrop forgotten the first contretemps between them: “You know you’ve been a stench in my nostrils all these five years?” Northrop said to Gale. “The bad smell of that sex talk you gave four years ago is still abroad throughout the state.”

Sex talk aside, what really infuriated Northrop was Gale’s lack of religious conviction: “You hide yourself in your annex up there [Gale’s laboratory]; have no connection with the rest of the university; investigate petty things about color, proportion, rhythm; teach that pernicious materialism of Physiological Psychology; and try to undo with your irreligion all the Christian Idealism taught by your superior.”

The president of the University of Minnesota then leaned toward Gale and shouted, “Do you believe in God?”

As the professor stammered out a long-winded answer that included phrases like “primitive literal anthropomorphism” and “figurative conception,” Northrop cut him off: “I can’t stand a man who can’t answer Yes or No. You’re a disgrace to this institution!”

More astounding than Northrop’s tirade was the fact that, in its wake, he rehired the professor once again. Maybe it was because of Northrop’s “natural human sympathy and kindliness,” which, Gale allowed, “were generously large where they were not artificially checked by his narrow education.” Or maybe Northrop just needed to vent. In any case, Gale was soon back on the job.

But neither of these men was inclined to change, which meant that Harlow Gale would continue to teach in his “materialistic” fashion, and Cyrus Northrop would continue to find that instruction irreligious and profane. There were no more scenes between them that Gale bothered to record, but he remained isolated from the president and his colleagues in the department of philosophy.

When Gale finally left the University, it was more with a whimper than a bang. In 1903, budget cuts imposed by the state meant that faculty would have to be let go. It was not surprising that a controversial sort like Harlow Gale would quickly feel the ax.

Gale worked for a time in insurance after leaving the University of Minnesota, but he was even less suited for the world of business than the world of academe. In time, he found a post with the city of Minneapolis, inspecting brickwork in area sewage systems.

The lack of glamour in his new career aside, Gale remained an interesting fixture around the community. He continued to live in the shadow of the University, where he kept a small lab, conducted experiments, and entertained students interested in psychology and progressive education. He had many friends outside the University, including the famed muckraking journalist Lincoln Steffens, who was a lifelong correspondent. Gale wrote a few scholarly articles, some fiction, and music critiques; served as secretary for the Minnesota Academy of Science; and dabbled in Socialist Party politics in Minnesota.

No doubt he occasionally bumped into Cyrus Northrop, too, who continued to head the University until 1911, when he finally retired as the longest-tenured president in the school’s history. It would take another six years after Northrop left office before the University of Minnesota began plans to create psychology department, which would finally be established in 1919.

Tim Brady is a St. Paul freelance writer and regular contributor to Minnesota. The quotes in this story come from Harlow Gale’s article “Ideals and Practice in a University,” which can be found in the Harlow Gale Papers at the University of Minnesota Archives.