A Year in The Life of a University: Sorting Out the Significant Events

Most of the University community was still vacationing last September when Harvard and the John F. Kennedy Memorial Library announced joint plans for the Library site at the Bennett St. M.B.T.A. yards. Harvard would build a massive new complex to centralize the study of government, economics, and international relations near the Memorial Library. All offices now located in the Littauer would be moved. The total cost: between $12 and $15 million.

In such ways is sorting the events of the last twelve months and making some sense of them mad edifficult. There has always been a small percentage in predicting. Nevertheless, it is possible to isolate some trends which seemed significant. Ten or fifteen years from now, some of them may still be significant.

(1) Development of the Kennedy Library: what consequences?

In some cases, there can be no doubt that fundamental change is coming. The development of the Kennedy Library complex falls into this category.

When it is completed in the early seventies, it may attract more than a million visitors a year. Twelve acres of new real estate will be opened up in the heart of Harvard Square. No one has vet predicted precisely the consequences of the Kennedy development, but there has been ample speculation: land values around the site will inevitably rise, and the competition for potential building sites will become increasingly intense. Over the long run, the prospect is for major redevelopment all around the Library site, and specifically more growth westward along Mt. Auburn St.

In ten or fifteen years, high rise commercial and apartment buildings may cluster around the Library site, intruding into Brattle Square and extending down Mt. Auburn St. Many city officials, planners, and architects envision this type of change. They expect the visual and commercial character of the Square to be altered drastically.

If these predictions are substantially correct, there are serious implications for the City Administration, the University, and Cambridge residents. What will be the character of the growth around the Library? What type of construction, what type of business will dominate the new development? Will the presence of the Library prompt developers to base commercial operations, not directly related to the Library, in Harvard Square.

Some University and city officials are clearly worried that the response to the Library will have unsettling effects on the Square: they forsee uncoordinated and unsightly commercial development that would detract from the 'Memorial' aspect of the Library. To control development, urban renewal has been suggested. Thus far, the idea has been discussed by the city officials, but nothing official has been proposed. The questions raised by the Library complex are serious ones that fundamentally affect the University environment. The issues of development crystalized this year; the course of development will loom large through the next decade.

(2)The University's Growth: how long, what price tag?

Harvard's decision to participate in the Library development emphasized another dimension of the year's activity-the incessant growth of the University. Putting the government-economics-international relations building next to the Library was not done out of sheer sentiment: Harvard wants more room for these fields anyway, and available land is running out. The University has already begun a policy of building up instead of out; and in the view of many officials, passing up the opportunity to use the Bennett St. M.B.T.A. yards for expansion would have been a disastrous mistake.

There were dozens of other reminders this year of Harvard's continual physical expansion. Holyoke Center was officially completed, and, at Radcliffe, the new Hilles Library was finished along with the first section of Mabel Daniels Hall. For the future, Harvard began final design work on the 10th undergraduate House and started excavating an automobile underpass on Cambridge St. (This $3.4 million project will also allow the closing of part of Kirkland St. for use as a construction site.)

The most convincing indication of how permanent this growth is came less than a month ago in President Pusey's annual report to the Board of Overseers. Pusey spent half the report simply enumerating Harvard's current capital needs. His total was $160 million, though he actually left out a few items and warned that there are other areas, now neglected, that will require more financial help in the near future. What the report amounted to was a permanent committment to large capital campaigns.

In concrete terms, this has meant (and will mean) not only expansion but also consolidation: the School of Education consolidated its activities from scattered buildings when Larsen Hall was constructed; the School of Design will do the same when its current $11 million fund drive is completed. The Social Relations Department collected itself in William James Hall; the new building on the Kennedy Library site do the same for the Government and Economics Department. And when the $49 million Program for Harvard Science (just getting under way) is completed, there will be considerable consolidation in a new undergraduate Science Center.

In short, 1966, confirmed that Harvard would continue to drive for more funds on all fronts, it also meant that the University had accepted the implications of present growth: that is, ever increasing activity in all areas, paralleled by larger needs for current and capital cash, and gradual increases in the numbers of Faculty members and students. Over the long run, growth begets more growth.

(3)The University's relation to the Federal government.

All this raises the question, Who Pays? For even with Harvard's enormous assets (endowment more than $1 billion, larger than any other private university in the nation), no one expects that the University will be able to meet its new expenses alone. President Pusey's report was clearly a plea for sustained alumni support, but annual giving itself will not cover the new costs. Many University officials believe that more and more of the annual budget will eventually come, in some form or other, from the federal government. Already, a third of the total comes from the government.

This is not merely an elementary question of coaxing more money from Washington (Though it is that, too. Once the war in Vietnam is finished, explains one Harvard official, "higher education" will be on Capitol Hill fighting for every new cent it can get, and, implicitly, he says, universities will be competing with new social programs such as air and water pollution measures.) Harvard is also faced with the prospect of increasing demands from agencies which hand out the money. In the past, these new demands have often resulted in nasty little squirmishes between government bureaucrats and professors; sometimes the fights have been three-way with the University's own bureaucrats struggling against both sides.

Events of the past year seem to confirm the inevitability of these conflicts. Harvard had a number of runins with federal requirements, and the most dramatic one still continues. This dispute is over so-called "effort reports"--that is, a professor's obligation to account for his time if he is doing research under a federal grant. More and more agencies are demanding that he estimate how much time he devotes to his project; most professors believe this impossible and undesirable. They have, conformed for the present, but the fight continues to eliminate or modify the regulation.

Questions like this seriously worry many members of the Faculty and Administration. How much will the influx of money threaten the autonomy of the university, or on a smaller scale, alter its operation? How much will federal funds affect the balance between different disciplines? But, though reservations are strong, it is clear that universities, Harvard included, want more federal money and that they will fight to get it: when President Johnson proposed that the NDEA program of student loans be substantially changed, universities yelled like hell, and, along with other affected interests, actually won a major modification in the President's plan.

Friction developed this year over another aspect of federal-university relations. This controversy was an old one, but it arose again with the establishment of the Kennedy Institute of Politics as a part of the John F. Kennedy School of Government (changed from the Graduate School of Public Administration). The point of contention: the involvement of scholars in current government policy problems.

The Institute's own goal is to sharpen the University's awareness of such policy questions. It will sponsor Faculty research and, by a variety of other means, will attempt to acquaint other parts of the University with the intracacies of policy problems. But in this purpose, many see a distortion of the "true" role of the University. The Institute is too closely connected with "establishment" politics and policies, they say, and thereby diverts scholars from pursuing an independent line of work.

The Institute's presence has reopened fundamental questions: does preoccupation (or just occupation) with current policy matters undermine the strength of true scholarship? Should professors advise the government on a regular basis? Or, as Richard Neustadt, director of the Institute of Politics maintains, should the University strive to accommodate both those interested in "pure" social science research and those attracted to policy concerns?

All these questions are probably aca- demic. Like it or not, Harvard professors have been serving as official consultants to the federal government for a long time. When the chance comes, some will leave swiftly (if often only temporarily) for a good job in Washington. The exodus of '61, from Bundy to Schlesinger, was not the first time Harvard professors served in important government positions; nor will it be the last. Under Johnson, the Cambridge to Washington shuttle has continued with men like Otto Eckstein going to the Council of Economic Advisers, Robert Bowie to the State Department, and James Vorenberg to the Justice Department.

(4) The students and the Administration: Conflict, Cooperation, or Coddling?

The Institute of Politics helped illuminate more than one set of conflicts during the past year. When the Institute invited Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara for a two-day stay in Cambridge, it did not anticipate the uproar the Secretary's visit would cause. The confrontation on Mill St. resulted from more than mere disagreement over the war. The premise of all actions taken by Students for a Democratic Society was that students should have a larger role in determining what does and does not happen at Harvard.

Evidently, SDS was not alone in thinking about the question. A series of events, beginning last Spring, convinced Dean Monro that the Administration should give more attention to the place of students in the College's decision-making mechanism. Many developments took Monro by surprise. Last May, for example, a group of students - many of them freshmen--decided that the University had decided too arbitrarily on a policy of dealing with the Selective Service System. They decided to ask for a referendum on the matter, specifically urging that Harvard not compute class rankings to be forwarded to local draft boards. In several days, they collected about 1500 signatures supporting the call for a referendum, and went to see Monro. The University Administration consistently resisted the referendum and the idea that the ranking policy become a matter for students to decide graduate Council and the Harvard.

In the fall, however, there was an obvious receptiveness to ideas coming from students. The Harvard Under-Policy Committee, the two organs of student "government" at the College, made important proposals--and had them accepted (a major change in parietals came from the HUC, and the HPC asked that students be allowed to take a free fifth course on a pass-fail basis; this is still in the works). When Phillips Brooks House Association indicated it was in financial trouble, Monro, as head of the Faculty committee for PBHA, helped shape a proposal for aid from the Faculty of Art sand Sciences. Undoubtedly, he also helped convince Dean Ford to accept the idea "in principle" (details still remain to be worked out).

The Role of Students

The presence of SDS has kept pressure on the Administration to consider the role of students in decision-making. By the end of the year, Monro had designated the entire topic for consideration by the Overseers Committee to Visit the College. This Committee has not legislative powers, but the mere tactful discussion marked the new status this subject has gained over the past year.

But the College was not the only center of student agitation during the year. Groups at the School of Education, the Law School, and the Medical School pressed their administrations for changes. About all these activities (the College included), it is still too early to speak conclusively. How representative of the concerns of most students are student groups? How enduring is the student emphasis on reform, and how enduring will be the seriousness of the Administration's response?

No Changes

It seems clear, however, that after one year of subdued agitation, there have been no major changes in student-administration relations in any of the parts of the University. In the College, no institutional changes to allow for more representation of student opinion accompanied all the talk. At the Law School, a Faculty-student committee has been established--it is too early now to predict what the committee's impact will be, but some students are already suggesting that it will turn out to be a device for suffocating real dissent. The Ed School may have made the most headway with the integration of students into some Faculty committees. Again, it is too early to tell.

Even in the event that students sustain their interest and the Administration maintains its seriousness, one final consideration remains: will the collaboration be successful, or will it simply be a series of compromises on key issues to keep everyone happy?

(5) Curriculum: Time for Change?

Where student discontent may have its greatest impact is on the curriculum. Here, it is possible, their complaints may fall on the receptive ears of some Faculty members who also believe change is necessary.

Med School Debate

In any case, 1966 saw at least one major Faculty begin deliberations that could lead to fundamental change in its curriculum. The Medical School, reacting to prodding from its new dean, Dr. Robert H. Ebert, began debating a series of major proposals for revamping medical instruction. Under the present curriculum, all students are required to carry the same basic course load. A special subcommittee suggested that this be altered. The subcommittee report emphasized the need of more flexibility in the curriculum to accommodate the varying needs and interests of students. It proposed that only a basic "core curriculum" be required of students and that the elective offerings be increased. The committee urged reduction in the amount of memorization and encouragement "independent thinking and scholarship which will insure continuing assimilation of new knowledge after graduation."

Pass-Fail

The debate still continues, and the prospect for some sort of change is considered good. Whatever curriculum changes take place at the Medical School, or any other areas of the University, will be lasting in effect. For example, in the College this year, the Harvard Policy Committee proposed that all students be allowed to take a free fifth course and have it graded only on a "pass-fail" basis. The Committee for Educational Policy has accepted this concept, added some details of its own, and now will put it before the full Faculty. If the proposal is passed, it will probably mean a significant increase in the academic workload of many students in the College. Likewise, the two-year debate on General Education has been completed, and a new Gen Ed Office will start looking for new Gen Ed courses to fill a more flexible program. This too, over the years, can expand the course offerings open to undergraduates.

It is difficult to write off the year in such simple terms. It is also difficult to argue convincingly that what appears important now will be important five or ten years from now. The stimulus towards curriculum changes may peter out. Problems between Harvard and the Federal government may be smoothed over. The University's planned growth may not be nearly so great--nor carry so many implications--as it now appears.

Equally possible--perhaps more probable - is that the events and trends of this year will generate farreaching consequences, now unforeseen and unintended.DEAN ROBERT EBERT