Faculty Member Thank University For Defense of Academic Freedom

In a dignified and historic ceremony the faculty yesterday afternoon formally expressed gratitude to the University Administration for its defense of Academic Freedom over the past year. More than 150 professors sat in Sanders Theatre during the half-hour presentation of citations to five Administration officials and addresses by Professors Archibald MacLeish and Samuel Eliot Morison '66. As spokesman for the five recipients President Pusey thanked the faculty for its tribute and expressed his hope that the University teachers and administrators would continue to cooperate "to find the right answer."

The citations, read by Archibald MacLeish, Boylston Professor of Rhetoric and Oratory, went to former Provost Paul H. Buck for his decisiveness and patience during last spring's controversy; to Dean Erwin N. Griswold for his vital role as a member of the special Faculty Advisor Committee; to Judge Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr. '27 for his stand as President of the Board of Overseers; to Charles A. Coolidge '17 as the senior member of the Corporation; and to President Pusey.

Schlesinger Receives for Buck

Each man rose in turn to hear his citation, except Paul Buck who was absent. Arthur M. Schlesinger, Sr., Francis Lee Higginson Professor of History, received the citation for him.

Both moderator Arthur N. Holcombe '06, Eaton Professor of the Science of Government, and Professor Morison, University Historian pointed out that the occasion was an unprecedented one in Harvard history.

"We can easily remember when faculties have criticized their administrators, but not so easily when they have honored them," Holcombe commented. "I have been under four administrations and have never seen such an expression of feeling until today. This is our happy occasion."

"Now Wish to Speak Minds"

In his address Professor MacLeish said that the five citations were but the opinions of men who have "witnessed the administrative conduct of University affairs over a critical period of its history, and in the history of the Republic, and who wish now to speak their minds."

He called the right of a University of its teachers as the fundamental issue involved. "It is to the enduring credit of this university that its faculties and its officers of administration recognized the true character of the issue with which they had to deal and mot it with resolution and courage," he continued.

MacLeish then credited Harvard's calm decision with saving other universities from surrendering their rights as free institutions and helping to prevent the United States from a form of society in which "things of the mind are regulated by the central state."

Professor Morison spoke before MacLeish. The distinguished historian charged his colleagues "to avoid acts, or associations that will bring our university into difficulties; to observe a decent respect to the opinions of mankind, even when these opinions of mankind, even when these opinions are erroneous and absurd; and above all, to avoid an attitude of smug superiority--the unforgivable sin in a democratic society."

Below are three of the citations:

Nathan Marsh Pusey

Few presidents of any institution can have taken office under conditions more trying than those which surrounded the installation of Nathan Pusey as President of Harvard. The University's basic decision in a matter vitally affecting its freedom from governmental control had been taken but had not yet been accepted either by the Congressional investigators or by that segment of public opinion which is more influenced by the vocabulary of professed anti-Communism that by the facts of the struggle for individual freedom. Harvard was under violent press and political attack by men who either misunderstood or misrepresented the nature of the issue and the realities of the decision, and the new President was himself a target of abuse. Nathan Pusey met this situation with a serene and quiet courage which did as much as the earlier acts of specific decision to affirm the continuing integrity of the University. Stubborn in the right, strong in his convictions as an administrator and as a man, bold where the freedom of the human mind and spirit is concerned Nathan Pusey has made himself, in the space of a few short months, the President of Harvard both in name and in deed.

Charles Allerton Coolidge

Fellow of Harvard University

Ultimate responsibility for the administrative policies of the University rests upon the corporation whose deliberative action is the constitutional context of our life and our work in this faculty. It was the corporation of Harvard University which, faced with attempts on the part of officials of government to dictate University policy in the crucial matte of the determination of the fitness of its teachers, resisted the pressures brought to bear upon it, defended the freedom of institutions of learning under the American system, reasserted the faith of the corporation in the integrity of the faculty and declared the right of the duly constituted authorities of the University to determine for administered, the disposition of each. To Charles Coolidge as senior member of the corporation and as member of the special committee of the corporation constituted to deal with these difficult matters, the faculties of this University owe a particular debt of gratitude. If Harvard has emerged from this trial stronger in purpose, stronger in confidence and stronger in her devotion to the freedom she has inherited, it is in large part to the qualities of determination and fundamental moral courage exhibited by Charles Coolidge and above all to his patient insistence upon timeless standards of uprightness and human decency that her thanks are due.

Charles Edward Wyzanski, Jr.

President of the Board of Overseers

The principal danger to the University of the Congressional investigations of 1953 was the danger that the charges preferred and publicized by Committee members might undermine the confidence of the University's alumni in its faculty, and that the ancient freedom of this institution might be destroyed from within by suspicion and distrust. It was, indeed, precisely to the suspicion and distrust of Harvard's graduates that the investigators openly appealed. The fact that the alumni, as a body, disappointed these hopes and stood firmly behind the University's policies as developed by its responsible authorities is a tribute to the Board of Overseers. Because the Board of Overseers, intimately informed of the truth about the University faculties, trusted the University, and because the alumni, in turn, trusted their Board of Overseers, not even the most malicious and persistent propaganda of doubt and of suspicion was able to subvert them. No graduate of Harvard could better represent the Board of Overseers and the alumni for whom it stands the Charles Wyzanski, a distinguished lawyer, one of the foremost judges of his time and an American who still believes in the great conception of intellectual freedom on which this Republic was founded. Charles Wyzanski's position on the issue raised by the Congressional investigators was stated eloquently when, speaking as President of the Board of Overseers, he charged the new President of this University to pursue "with unremitting vigilance, inquiry into fundamental truths in every field of knowledge, no matter where the trail leads, no matter how unpopular the result." This, and not the cowardly counsel of suspicion and fear, is American doctrine