New Frontier Wants Faculty; Students Want Latin Diplomas

Students come to the Summer School undoubtedly looking for damage from the renowned "Diploma Riots" or wondering whether America's oldest university is still standing after President Kennedy's raid of the personnel.

The year at Harvard was characterized by issues slightly more crucial than what language to have on diplomas and by problems perhaps more acute than the mass withdrawal to Washington. Dean Erin N. Griswold of the Law School was troubled most by the Kennedy Administration, which took about one-eighth of his faculty, but even one Harvard dean could complain louder. Don K. Price, Dean of the School of Public Administration, was heard to say that President Kennedy stole 100 per cent of his full-time faculty--i.e. Secretary of the Public Administration Faculty, David Bell, who was named Director of the Budget Bureau.

Thousands of undergraduates and graduate students returned to Harvard in the fall of 1960 to find many of their professors already actively engaged in advisory roles for the chosen candidate--Sen. John Fitsgerald Kennedy '40. The switch from Adlai Stevenson was made with only a few bruises. The New Yorker cartoon aptly showed a messenger running into a smoked-filled room, "it's Harvard, professor, they went last June's exams corrected."

At a Hillel Society round-table discussion in the fall, McGeorge Bundy, Dean of the Faculty of Arts of Sciences and an erstwhile Republican, announced that he was supporting Kennedy; but few people took note of the endorsement. Only William Y. Elliott, professor of Government and former Director of the Summer School, and Lon L. Fuller, professor of Law and a close Nixon advisor, remained on the Republican side.

After Kennedy won the election (with a campaign that included a speech via telephone to students and "brain trusters" at the University--"the only audience that can understand my accent"), students viewed with pride the increasing favorable publicity upon Harvard. "The Crucible That Turns out Presidents," headlined an Associated Press story throughout the nation.

Chayes, Cox, Bell, a few former faculty members, and several alumni (Dillon, Robert Kennedy, Nitze, Tobin, Weaver) were appointed by the 25th President, and Harvard was on top of the world. Then Kennedy chose Bundy his Special Assistant for National Security Affairs on New Year's Day, and undergraduates began to think that the New Frontier was striking too close to home. Bundy was the popular lecturer of an American foreign policy course and the most influential force in the University Administration.

Immediately the Harvard Crimson and members of the Faculty began speculating about Bundy's successor and about President Nathan M. Pusey's new role as Acting Dean. Pusey, however, chose to study the whole administrative structure of the University during the Spring Term and remained quiet about a permanent Dean of the Faculty. Pusey bacame the center of attention even in educational policy decisions and undergraduate affairs formerly handled by his right-hand man since 1953.

Then Schlesinger, Galbraith, and Reischauer,--three professors close to undergraduates--were picked for high positions and Harvard men took mixed views of the New Frontier's talent search. Reaction around the nation remained highly favorable, until the inevitable first mistake by the Kennedy Administration (Cuba), while response at the College was one of pride--mixed with frustration over the loss of top instructors.

Perhaps students needed a new issue in the spring, perhaps they had latent animosities to release; perhaps they were more "conservative" or "traditional" than they like to think. In any case, the furor over the language and format of diplomas shook the College for several weeks. During Commencement Week ten days ago, the diploma issue was mentioned everywhere--from the Ivy Oration to the President's talk to seniors--even by administrators who a month earlier had desperately hoped that the whole matter would be suppressed.

In April a Radcliffe girl on the Crimson discovered that diplomas would be written in English for the first time this year and published the story. Immediately petitions were circulating protesting the change, and, when seniors discovered the new-style diploma looked like what they termed "a YMCA certificate," they yelled louder.

The Senior Class Committee's arguments and a barrage of letters from alumni and students to Pusey and/or the Crimson made little sense to the powers that be. Pusey stode firm on the decision--made casually at a Faculty meeting in October--and even the Overseers could promise only that the format would be "studied" next year. The language would stay the same--English.

Before the Overseers met, a Harvard junior attracted a gathering in front of Widener to bemoan the abandonment of Latin. The group marched on the President's house in good spirits and heard Pusey quip. "What's pet in Latin/ Or chic in Greek,/I always distinguish/More clearly in English." The 2000 students paraded around the Square for a while, then went home.

The next night--April 28, 1961--a casual gathering around 7 p.m. developed into a yelling, chanting gang of 4,000 students, who marched through the streets and then camped in the Square. Cambridge police thought that the fun was over and decided that tear gas would send the boys home to their books. It did, Groaned a dean, "What a night!" Tension mounted, six students were thrown into paddy wagons, and the deans were "disgusted." Either before or during the furor, College officials searched through the records under "R" for suitable public statements on riots; later they quoted remarks that sounded amazingly like those by deans in former years.

Afterwards, Bostonians wondered whether Harvard boys were really upset about diplomas or were simply looking for a spring-time excuse. Harvard observers generally agreed that the first demonstration was a genuine protest against a change made without student consulation; the second night's gathering was a full-fledged spring riot using the diploma issue as a suitable reason for parading the streets.

Harvard students, being Harvard students, had other things on their minds last year. National magazines were wondering whether a wave of conservation or at least of political activism was sweeping college campuses, and their correspondents looked first to Harvard. Were Harvard students becoming more conservative? More politically active?

The answer offered most of the time was that conservatives at Harvard were becoming more voluble and more organized not more numerous. Groups like the Young Americans for Freedom made themselves heard more often--either as a reaction against the increasingly active liberals or as youthful discontent with parental politics. Conservatives over the winter finally entered the dialogue at the University, realizing their faults and presenting formidable arguments against the liberals. But it would be inaccurate to say that conservatives increased at all in Cambridge.

The traditional Young Republican Club and Young Democratic Club yielded to growing splinter political clubs, remnants of the "single issue" cubs of the previous year. This increased involvement with public affairs brought one interesting problem to the students of Harvard College.

Their Student Council President, Howard J. Phillips, was making speeches throughout the East as an arch conservative. the average person, according to an anti-Phillips faction, was thinking of Harvard undergraduates as conservative because Phillips' name and title had been attached to widely distributed conservative pronouncements. The office of Student Council President is apolitical, they said, and its incumbent is elected not by the student body but by the Council (which is furthermore not a representative body). It was not his fault, answered Phillips, if his statements were associated with his title and misinterpreted.

Some Council members tried impeachment or censure, others tried a rule prohibiting office holders in a political club (like Phillips) from holding office in the Council. Phillips escaped with a mild censure, but the power, or indeed the existence, of his Council was endangered at the close of the academic year.

Dunster House voted in a referendum to withdraw its Council representative to "dramatize the inadequacy of the present Council" and sent its House Committee Chairman to clean up the mess. Phillips and Dunster House's William E. Bailey agreed to work together for a new, and supposedly better, Council.

Political involvement was perhaps best noticed in another even of the year-typified by a handful of students who left yesterday for Tanganyka and a summer of teaching and working. The Peace Corps and Harvard's related programs occupied much student interest during 1961-62. Undergraduates immediately supported candidate Kennedy's bid for a Peace Corps and then started their own projects here. Project Tanganyka, one of the more successful, gathered together those students who expressed more than a preliminary willingness "to be interested in a Peace Corps."

The Harvard Crimson, which tells itself that it reflects student interests, was worried last year about the general academic trend of the College. "The College does not provide alternatives to academic success except in extracurricular terms," said a typical editorial. Was Harvard raising only future teachers? Was it offering a valid picture of business or professional life, asked the Crimeds.

Also, the Crimson continued its fight for "tutorial-for-all" (for non-Honors as well as Honors students), which came in January 1961: but still the paper was not satisfied with the new arrangement. Other editorials protested the timing of the Faculty decision prohibiting the varsity hockey team from entering the NCAA tournament, attacked the House Un-American Activities Committee, criticized Harvard's stand on expanding the size of the College ("policy by osmosis") and questioned the uses and abuses of the Loeb Drama Center.

Civic affairs and the University's handling of town-gown relations also bothered the Crimson. Particularly lively last winter was the "stills" controversy. An ambitious Cambridge developer proposed a 15-story office building on stilts on the edge of Cambridge common across from Littauer Center. The University privately opposed the plan, along with the historic-minded or traffic-wearied citizens in the community. The State Senate at first approved the special sale of public land for the building, but Governor John a. Volpe Vetoed the move.

Another near-explosive issue was President Pusey's refusal of permission for Pete Seeger, Kennedy's classmate, to present his folk songs at Harvard after his indictment for contempt of Congress (before the HUAC). Faculty reaction was generally unfavorable. Pusey relented, explained that he had expected a political rally, and ruled that Seeger could visit the University if he agreed to sing only. The University does not want to get involved in cases still pending in court, said the President.

Radcliffe, constitutionally separate from but in fact intimately part of the University, made big news in 1960-61. The first year of President Mary I. Bunting marked the creation on an Institute for advanced study for women who wish to recharge their intellectual batteries in addition to minding the kids. Response to this unique chance for womens was impressive.