Man Around the Campus

When William S. Barnes was an undergraduate at Yale, he was, he says, a very active "man around the campus." He was business manager of the Yale Record, manager of the 150-lb. football team, head cheerleader, member of the varsity hockey and rugby teams, and captain of his College crew. Twenty years later, as Assistant Dean of the Harvard Law School, he is still the widely-ranging "man around the campus." Originator and director of the International Legal Studies program and co-ordinator of the World Tax Series, he has now undertaken a different type of activity--running as a C.C.A. candidate for Cambridge School Committee.

Bill Barnes entered the School Committee picture when Judson T. Shaplin, Associate Dean of the School of Education, decided not to seek re-election. Shaplin asked Barnes to replace him in the so-called "Harvard seat;" Barnes, who says he has always been interested in educational problems, accepted the bid and immediately received Civic Association support. Since then, he has spoken to almost every graduate and undergraduate political organization and has won a slew of endorsements that are encouraging but of doubtful value.

The "Harvard seat" is a pleasant political myth, and Barnes realizes he must fight for his election. He has College, Law School and GSAS young Democrats, Republicans and liberals working for him, allegedly reaping all sorts of political experience. "It's a new form of patronage," Professor Arthur M. Schlesinger, Jr. commented recently. "Bill gives people jobs before the election instead of after it." Schlesinger is only one of many University people to endorse Barnes' candidacy; even if there is no such thing as a "Harvard seat," Barnes is certainly the Harvard candidate.

Shaplin had considered Barnes a likely man chiefly because of his tax and budgetary experience, a talent sorely needed in the muddled affairs of the School Committee. At first, Barnes concentrated his campaign on this point, but he found it a deadening issue and has changed his ground to the National Defense Education Act loyalty oath and the future of Rindge Technical High School. He is particularly disturbed about the implications of NDEA for local school employees; under sections of the Act pertaining to guidance and foreign language training, the jobs of people hired by local school boards can become dependent upon willingness to sign the loyalty affidavit. "NDEA is not only a University problem," Barnes says, "and Cambridge citizens should understand how this obnoxious loyalty provision can apply to their schools."

Modern languages, he says, are another of his major educational concerns. Cambridge has received some NDEA money along this line, but it hasn't decided how to use it. The city is "just beginning to wake up" to the importance of modern languages, Barnes adds.

Barnes was born in New York City about forty years ago and attended St. Paul's School before entering Yale in the Class of 1940 (the same class as McGeorge Bundy). He majored in Government and found time in his hectic extra-curricular career to write a thesis on Development of Public Policy that was judged the best in the department.

He graduated at the age of twenty and moved on right away to Harvard Law School, where he managed to miss the first term exams because of an appendicitis attack. He joined the Air Force in mid-1941 and graduated from officers' training school four months after Pearl Harbor.

Barnes was sent to North Africa in the first American fighter group to fly support for General Montgomery. He flew 66 missions before being shot down and captured over Tunis. He tried to escape and nearly succeeded--disguised as an Arab, with blackened face and dirty blanket, he managed to get by one German patrol before taking refuge in "a hole at El Hama." There, he says, "I made a poor choice of Arab friends, and one of them turned me over to the Italians. They tried me as a spy before the high command while the British were shelling the hell out of the town. Everyone was preparing to pull out, but they had time to cogitate over whether or not to execute me."

They finally decided not to, and Barnes was sent to a German prison camp at Sagan. With the support of the senior American officer, he tried to counter-act Nazi propaganda by teaching a course in American institutions and organizing a mock election. "It was very significant to note that the difference in the prisoners' ability to make something out of the experience was not social or economic background, but education." The prison camp marked the beginning, Barnes says, of his great interest in education.

The war over, Barnes went back to law school and then to the University of Geneva for post-graduate work. (He received a Doctorate from Geneva in 1957.) At Geneva he became interested in the relation between law and international affairs, a field generally known as comparative law. After his studies in Switzerland, he worked at the University of Michigan as a research associate in comparative law before returning to Harvard ten years ago.

At the request of Dean Griswold, he set up the international legal studies program and the World Tax Series--a group of international tax studies carried on with the aid of foundation grants. When Barnes arrived, the Law School had only one course devoted to international law; this fall, a large new building devoted entirely to international legal studies was opened next to Langdell Hall.

Now, in addition to the School Committee campaign, Barnes says he is "really excited" about Latin-American legal relations. "The idea of One America is more than just political talk. It is important to reconcile our concept of the government under law with the Latin American idea of law as what the government says it is."

Cambridge politics, especially the School Committee, is a tiring, tiresome affair. (One ex-mayor says that presiding at School Committee sessions is the worst part of a job that no one but Al Vellucci wants.) Barnes--the perennial "man around the campus"--is an interesting new face on the scene. His obvious energy and enthusiasm will win him votes, if not a hearing among the more cynical local politicians.