The Bowles Dismissal

The Corporation has failed to explain satisfactorily why it voted last week to terminate the appointment of Samuel Bowles. The decision seems both unnecessary and ill-considered, since a reasonable alternative was open to the University. Harvard's interest in enforcing the oath is patently gratuitous, because the courts have already enjoined M.I.T. in a similar case now pending before the Supreme Judicial Court.

Bowles repeatedly petitioned the Corporation to take no action until constitutional issues raised in the M.I.T. suit are settled. Harvard had nothing to lose by quietly honoring Bowles's request for a postponement until that suit is adjudicated. Sargent Kennedy, Secretary to the Corporation, has insisted that Harvard "had no choice but to obey the laws of the Commonwealth." Yet he has admitted that a college or university cannot be prosecuted if one of its teachers refuses to sign the oath; the University would not have been liable if it had held off until the fall, when the M.I.T. case will be heard.

But by acting prematurely, the Corporation has not only involved itself in an unnecessary law suit, but has also given tacit approval to an oath many of its Faculty find reprehensible. Members of the Faculty have refused to sign the oath before, but have always capitulated when the Corporation suggested they were endangering their positions. Few Faculty members, especially junior faculty who feel hostile toward the oath, can afford to put their jobs on the line when the threat to academic freedom is unspecified and the President and Fellows offer them little support.

University officials claim--and Faculty members agree--that the oath is "innocuous," because unlike oaths in other states, it does not require teachers to swear that they are not or never have been members of "subversive" organizations. Yet Harvard fought this oath in the 1930's arguing then, as Bowles does today, that any requirement of an affirmation on loyalty represented a politically inspired interference with the independence of the University. By its hasty actions in this case, the University has unwittingly supported a statute that singles out teachers as a group whose loyalties are particularly suspect. Harvard has acknowledged that the Commonwealth can tamper freely with its affairs. This is absolutely contrary to the University's usual defense of its Faculty's autonomy.

The University need not have battled the Commonwealth to register its disapproval of an oath many of its Faculty members resent. Moral courage was not required of the Corporation. It would seem that if the Corporation had wished to remain noncommittal over the oath, to avoid a brouhaha, it need only have agreed to wait for M.I.T.