Dow and the Faculty

The sit-in last Wednesday that imprisoned a Dow Chemical Corp. recruiter in a Malinckrodt conference room for seven hours was, according to President Pusey, a clear violation of the "freedom of expression or movement of others." That is the main reason the Faculty voted Tuesday to accept the recommendations of the Administrative Board and put 74 of the 300 or sodemonstrators on probation.

In doing so, the Faculty told the students in no uncertain terms that despite their outrage over the Vietnamwar, protest at Harvard had to stay within limits. At this point, there is some reason to believe that any future obstructive demonstration will meet sharper retaliation from the University--probably severance.

Actually, most of the students who crammed the narrow hall in Mallinckrodt had some reason to believe the University would view their action quite severly. Less than a year ago, after several hundred students forced Secretary of Defense McNamara from his car on Mill St., Dean Monro warned that such activity in the future would become a disciplinary matter for the Faculty.

Monro's warning led many people to predict that the Faculty would do more than put the most deeply involved demonstrators on probation. That the Faculty opted for a moderate punishment is ample evidence that a concerted effort was made to understand the exacerbated felings of the anti-war student bloc at Harvard.

Most Faculty members probably realized that students against the war have found little consolution in fighting the Johnson Administration through the conventional political process.

Nor have public demonstrations been very effective. The march on the Pentagon only a few days before Dow came to Harvard may have been perversely satisfying to students who wanted the Federal troops and police to over-react. Unfortunately it did little to increase antiwar sentiment among voters. The Washington veterans' bitterness at the treatment they got that bloody weekend, compounded by their unrelieved frustration, undoubtedly affected what went on in Mallinckrodt's hallway.

But frustration is only one explanation for the bitter tone of Wednesday's events. Many of those who sat-in merely happened by the scene and found an immediate outlet for their suppressed anger over the war. In fact, many of those punished had never even considered civil disobedience until they were confronted with an easy opportunity--and hard moral choice--after Wednesday's 11 o'clock class.

For many participants, however, there were other reasons to obstruct the Dow representative. For one thing, a sit-in open defiance of University rules would let the Administration and Faculty know that at least a few students were outraged by Harvard's willingness to cooperate with companies and agencies linked to the American war effort. These students, many of whom started the sit-in are certain that "free expression or movement" are not the paramount issues.

Rather, as students morally committed against the war, they must oppose--and even obstruct--complicity with the war where they have the most power, in the University. Their decision to adopt what many Faculty members call "McCarthyism of the left" doesn't bother them. They care about Vietnam, and U.S. foreign policy in the 1960s not the repressive atmosphere of more than a decade ago.

These students probably know by now that the Harvard Research Contract Office did $55 million worth of business last year with the government. A small fraction of this money for publishable, unclassified research came from the State Department, Defense Department, and the Agency for International Development.

If this were not enough, everytime an anti-war demonstrator walks by the Office of Graduate and Career Plans, he can be fairly certain that a university, company, or government agency--all linked peripherally with the war--is in the process of recruting one of his fellow students. As one demonstrator on probation said yesterday, "The damn warmakers have their tentacles around everything."

He's probably right. Yet the Faculty, while it punished him, seems to understand his anger. At Tuesday's special meeting, Stanley Hoffmann, professor of Government, proposed--to loud applause--a student-Faculty-Administration Committee to deal with the issues that concern the demonstrators. Yesterday, President Pusey said that he felt the Faculty had committed itself to set up such a committee. It will probe, if Hoffmann's plans are adopted, campus recruitment, the University and the war, and forms of off-campus anti-war protest.

In short, it appears that the Faculty will meet at least this one of the many demands adopted at Monday night's meeting of the demonstrators and their sympathizers in Lowell Lecture Hall. This, of course, doesn't mean that the University has surrendered to student power.

Still, at this point, there is only so much the Faculty can do to soothe the students who obstructed the Dow recruiter. Few professors would ever accept restrictions on the work they do for the government, classified or not. Research expenses are high these days and the government is the richest benefactor. This factor, of course, pales before the spectre of possible incursions upon academic freedom. For University policy dictates only that a professor meet his commitments to the Faculty and students. The rest of his time is virtually his own.

Recruiting poses an equally thorny problem. Dean Glimp--who has nominal jurisdiction over the Office of Graduate and Career Plans--said Tuesday that the recruiting issue is basically one of free speech. He went on to say that the issue of possible University discrimination among recruiters is "not negotiable."

The committee, when it is finally established, may serev only to conciliate students infuriated by what they see as University complicity with the war. It is unlikely to ask Harvard to sever connections with the outside world. In any case, there is no doubt that the demonstration forced the Administration and Faculty to question the effect of the war on the University more seriously than ever before. In this respect, the probated students were effective. But this small, politic concession by the Faculty does not mean that any substantive changes will follow.