HOLDS UNIVERSITY SYSTEM DESPOTIC

"Harvard is an autocracy", says Dr. J. E. Kirkpatrick, Professor of History at Olivet College, and former member of the University tutorial staff, but he hastens to add, "As an autocracy it is excellent, intelligent, honest, efficient, sensitive, and responsive, a superior sort of government. If all autocracies could be administered as well as this has been for the past half century, no democracy would have much chance to rise in the world."

In these words Dr. Kirkpatrick, who is a graduate of Yale, sums up the opinions which he has gathered by an intensive study of Harvard government which will shortly be printed by the Yale University Press in New Haven.

The report which Dr. Kirkpatrick has drawn up composes what is probably the most thorough treatise on this subject ever written. Dr. Kirkpatrick is by no means antagonistic to the management of the University, but he points out many respects in which he believes its government might be improved. He stresses most the difference between a faculty government and that of a non-resident corporation such as is now in force, and declares that this system might be improved by faculty control.

President Benevolent Despot

In giving his opinion of to just what extent the president's power extends, he quotes President Lowell in a recent New York address in which he says: "There is a feeling that the President is an autocrat; yet he has no power to decide anything or to give orders to anybody in the institution. Over the professors or the faculty he has no authority of any kind." In spite of this, however, Dr. Kirkpatrick believes that the government is "a benevolent despotism" with the president as the despot. "A practical control over the appointing and administrative boards of the faculties", he says, "goes far toward securing for the officer who possesses it, the rule over the institution."

The reason that there is never any demurring against this despotism, he believes, is that the system allows perfect freedom to the members of the teaching staff, who to a large extent take the attitude that they do not care what the government of the University may be so long as it gives them their salaries and an opportunity to do their work. Another reason he believes is that there is no faculty of the whole University. "The teaching staffs of the several colleges and schools", he says, "have no common meeting, organization, or committees. The one officer who binds them together is the president.

In support of this theory of the lack of irritation. Dr. Kirkpatrick quotes several members of the faculty as characterizing the system under the present executive as "ideal". "Dean Pound", he adds, "says there is a good deal of irritation beneath the surface but thinks that the present form of government will continue indefinites.

This "content" and general smooth ness in the University government. D. Kirkpatrick feels, has done much towards giving an impression concerning its organization which is contrary to fact. "The close personal and social relation of the faculty people with their administrative superiors", he says, "undoubtedly constitutes a means of communication and influence which makes possible the conditions which President Lowell describes as 'table serving' by the governors. This close relation, together with the high personal character of the president and his associated administrative staff, causes the unreflecting young instructor to describe the government of Harvard as 'democratic'.

The Stuarts May Come Yet

"The Harvard system", concludes Dr. Kirkpatrick in regard to this matter, "works because strong men have thus far been found for the office. When the Bourbons, or even the Tudors fall and the Stuarts or Hanorerians arrive, there will be a different story to tell. As one of the professors remarked, then most anything may happen. 'But', he added hopefully, 'the office is such that it demands the strong man and it ought to find him.' The president has large powers and it is hoped that he will not abuse them. Harvard society has evidently done what every human group tends to do, and most of them at some time do do, put its trust in an all powerful ruler."

Criticism is in Family

Concerning any criticism which may he made of the "autocratic" system, Dr. Kirkpatrick declares: "The personal and spirited attacks upon the policies of the presidential incumbent are usually within the family. When the formal farewell was tendered Professor Baker during the first month of 1925, the presiding officer asked that no publicity be given to the addresses or events of the meeting. An emeritus professor who has nothing to gain or lose in a personal or professional way, makes pointed and personal criticism of the policies of the present administration, but does not wish to be quoted or to even have the incidents he mentions connected with Harvard, because 'all dread scandal'. However the Harvard CRIMSON is not so cautions." He then makes several quotations from CRIMSON editorials commenting upon President Lowell's letter to Professor Baker upon the occasion of his acceptance of the call to Yale.

"This criticism", he continues, referring to the editorials, "is often unduly violent. This may be inevitable, as in pre-revolutionary Russia, but it is none the less significant. President Eliot fears for the future of the presidency just because of the criticisms that are heaped upon the incumbent. He believes that the life service tradition should be held inviolable but that men are liable to break, or to be driven from office. This condition, if it were obtained, would cause the kind of man which the office demands to avoid it, tion, it assumes a super-man'."

As a final statement of his attitude in regard to the governmental situation at the University, Dr. Kirkpatrick speaks of an article which recently appeared in the London Observer, saying that "in this age in Spain as in Italy--there is no working substitute for liberty." "If this is true," concluded Dr. Kirkpatrick, "then the Harvard faculties can not long consent to the personal government of the president of that institution, far different though it be from that of Mussolini and Rivera. But too high a price may be paid for every 'good government.' Certainly if the superman fails and the mediocre man, not to mention the stupid incumbent who is not alas without frequent example in American academic offices arrives, then the Harvard faculties of today, like those of previous centuries may discover that there 'Is no working substitute for liberty,' and that 'chains' even though self-imposed must sooner or later be broken.