The Administration: IV

The decisions that Harvard has not made, and those it has made for the wrong reasons, might be faced with greater equanimity if President Pusey seemed conscious of the complex problems confronting the University. But too many questions, major and minor, pass unmentioned: expansion and Harvard-Radcliffe relations are regrettably typical of the issues that the President has chosen to ignore.

Part of the difficulty about expansion comes from Mr. Pusey's inclination to make decisions alone and to tell no one of his conclusions. This tendency resulted at least once in Mr. Bundy and Mr. Pusey working directly at cross-purposes--the Dean following a policy of non-expansion while the President was firmly committed to enlarging the College. Even though the decision had been made, the substantive issues of enlarging the College have not been faced or discussed even today; it was scarcely surprising that the two top members of the Administration managed to reach a tacit misunderstanding.

In part, perhaps, because he was alarmed by this confusion, Mr. Bundy then appointed a Faculty committee to discuss the problem. A few months later he left for Washington. A year and a half has passed, but Mr. Pusey has not yet induced the committee to make a report. The situation is particularly hazardous because many members of the Faculty seem to have lost faith in the President's willingness to consider the aspects of problems which the Faculty feels are important.

A different but equally serious problem is evident in Mr. Pusey's treatment of the relation between Harvard and Radcliffe. The present situation is, as the President put it, "murky," but he has done very little to bring clarity. Reacting to President Bunting's suggestion that Harvard's tenth House might be coeducational, Mr. Pusey said, "Mrs. Bunting has nothing to do with the planning of the tenth House. Mrs. Bunting has nothing to do with the planning of Harvard College in general." This was apparently Mr. Pusey's way of dismissing any temptation to believe that Harvard-Radcliffe relations were worth further consideration.

Later, the President commented that the decision to grant Radcliffe's diplomas in the name of Harvard did not represent a step toward "gradual integration." But apparently he has not decided what the future does hold, and is prepared to face Mrs. Bunting's imaginative proposals with nothing more than indifference. Mrs. Bunting has a right to be annoyed, and the Faculty has reason to be worried.

Bland refusal to perceive that issues exist--much less that they are debatable--is not limited to the broad realms of policy. Students have complained of the administration of Loeb Drama Center for almost two years, and worried about the conflict between professionalism and amateur acting; President Pusey has said that he sees no problem at Loeb.

Until the President accepts the fact that there are often problems even where nobody admits them and always difficulties where people think they exist, the actual process of decision-making is almost an abstract issue. The reasonable limit on the areas to which the President gives his attention should be the time he can devote, not a theory that these areas are not worth his attention.