Arthur Holcombe was a professor at Harvard who taught a several different government classes that Jack signed up for. Described as “fusty, pompous, long-winded, and not given to praise” Holcombe later maintained that he had no recollection of him when Jack took his sophomore-level introduction to government course. But, he claimed Jack stood out from his peers during an advanced, seminar-style course his junior year but lacked focus,
“(I) taught his father a good many years before. I taught his older brother. I taught later on his two younger brothers, and the family were all, of course, interested in politics. But, when Jack Kennedy was in college, politics wasn’t a primary interest of his. His older brother, Joe Jr., was to be the politician of the family, and with reasonable amount of good fortune he would have been a great success in politics. Joe Jr. seemed to have everything a politician needs. He had firmness of purpose, a happy manner with people; he had everything for success in politics. Evidently, at that time the family thought there could only be one real politician at a time, or in a generation, and Jack, I think, was more interested in history, from an academic point of view.
He lived with an active group of young felllow, but of course, I didn’t know them in their social relations. I only knew them in their class work, and in connection with their functioning as students.”
[3, p. 243, 245]