Kennedy Institute is a Haven for 'In-and-Outers,' Men Who Move Betwixt Government and Academia

Jonathan Moore, one of the first ten Fellows of the Kennedy School's Institute of Politics, resigned his position early this year to become foreign policy adviser to Governor George Romney of Michigan. From 1964 to 1966; Moore had served as special assistant to William Bundy, the assistant secretary of State for Far Eastern Affairs.

Moore made the following statement about the Fellows Program to the Harvard Club of Eastern Michigan, May 18.

The Fellows program is just as experimental as the rest of the Institute's endeavor. Intensively experimental, with all the characteristics thereof: disorganization, gaps, trial-and-error on the one hand; innovation, excitement, freedom on the other. And we don't yet know the results. The returns aren't in; the experiment continues.

When the Institute picked its first group of ten Fellows, it was placing bets on individuals, on their value to the political life of the society as a whole. It was making an investment not so much in research or publication or teaching but more in a given man's future worth and leadership. This is as it should be, in my opinion.

Of course the direct result of the individual's academic effort during the period of his Fellowship is important on its own merits. I believe, for instance, that the setting up of a formal program of Institute studies, which would be directed at fresh examination of given public policy questions -- combining the perspective of the political scholar with that of the political practitioner, getting Faculty members and Fellows together in harness to analyze the toughest problems facing our political system and coming up with mutual recommendations on how better to solve them -- will be an important factor in getting the Institute surely established.

This, in turn -- along with the simple passage of time -- will evoke more acceptance and less skepticism from the rest of the Harvard Academic community, which must, after all, ask what these bright-eyed, bushy-tailed bureaucrats are really doing here that benefits the goals of scholarship. There's plenty they can do -- the academic community needs both political science and politics, expertise in both theory and application, to effectively teach or research in the political realm, or to contribute to higher standards of public service. But all this may take some time to prove out.

A Kennedy Fellow is appointed directly by the President and Fellows of Harvard College, and this allows him to work in any of the various schools or Departments which make up the University. He may range as far as his own program dictates. The idea is to emphasize individuality and diversity in the choice of the Fellows by the Institute and in the choice of programs by the Fellows. The freedom is there: here are the resources, you choose.

My colleagues this year -- almost all of whom have come from within the government -- are following various projects while Fellows of the Institute. Two books are being written, one on Congress and one on civil rights. Scholarly articles have been prepared on international law, arms control, and the origins of the cold war. Independent courses of study are being pursued.

In addition to our own programs, we are expected to be responsive to various requests from within the Harvard community to speak about our own areas of direct experience. This may be before undergraduate clubs and special graduate groups, at seminars and panel discussions, and so forth. Most of us have taught a noncredit, extracurricular seminar for undergraduates, on such subjects as "The Racial Dilemma," "Candidate Strategy and Decision-Making," and "Working Group on Poverty in Boston." This opportunity, I think, has been invaluable to us: an experience in teaching and an exposure to learning. We do not masquerade as Faculty members, but we do believe that our practical, operational experience in government and politics gives us something to contribute to the educational process.

In hearing about the Kennedy Institute, as it is frequently called, one encounters the term "in-and-outers." One of the prime purposes of the Institute is the encouragement, the care-and-feeding, of these creatures.

An "in-and-outer" refers to a person who over the span of his career will spend time both in government--in law or academia, for instance--perhaps in several cycles. This kind of mobility of people happens for a variety of reasons and serves various purposes. But the Institute of Politics is the only educational institution I know of which was established with the explicit goal of serving the interests and needs of these people who want to work in more than one realm, for more than one institution, who desire engagement in public service and the "political life" across vocational demarcation lines.

Men who serve in government and outside of it, who move back and forth, do so, it seems to me, for two basic reasons. One, to maintain independence. If you have worked in more than one locus successfully, if you have more than one professional home, so to speak, you are not solely dependent on your current job to survive. You don't depend unwhole-somely on that one boss, on that next efficiency report, or on defending the status quo of that one department or agency. You can quit tomorrow if you want or need to, with a place to go, without being deterred by worry about where your next paycheck or your next opportunity is going to come from. This mobility, this additional career option, then, protects your integrity, allows you to keep your cussedness, alleviates the necessity of compromising on an issue of principle. You are more independent.

Secondly, we need generalists who are competent to inter-relate the functions and the interests of one component of our society with another, who understand how to calculate the common, overlapping interest. Someone must comprehend and be capable of acting on knowledge about where the various pieces of the picture fit together, how they best integrate into the whole coordinated effort. The man who develops an inter-disciplinary, inter-community experience can better perform this function. Ideas must cross-fertilize across arbitrary groupings, and ultimately to communicate those ideas effectively you need to movement, not just words and pieces of paper. When people live in isolation they are in danger of becoming distorted by their own interests, their approach to life may be narrow, prejudiced. People who are exposed to others, to different ways of life than their own, are going to generally behave better in terms of their fellow man. The "in-and-outer," then, should have a unique capability to combat parochialism and to integrate diverse effort.

Both these basic goals -- independence and a multi-dimensional competency --contribute, in turn, to a certain freedom of spirit and intellect which is philosophically necessary for anyone who wants to wear away the wall of life, as Camus said, or to give his body for the public service, as Theodore Roosevelt said.

Grindstone

I came to the Kennedy Institute for several reasons. To get away from the bureaucratic grindstone. To fill important gaps in my own knowledge and get access to current academic thinking in my field. Finally, to actually effect a transition out of government, for a while.

I can't over-emphasize the emotional and intellectual importance of taking time under the circumstances provided by the Institute to get away from the rat race and get your batteries recharged. To expose yourself voluntarily to new points of view and new problems. To let your mind run free, and find your ideas, your perceptions, change and grow in this atmosphere, liberated from the debilating day-by-day demands of an operational job. The opportunity for this kind of rejuvenation, unshackling, could be worth the year all by itself.

Although it didn't turn out the way I planned it, let me sketch out briefly my own course of study while a Fellow. My experience in government had concentrated on the political and politico-military aspects of the less-developed areas of the world. I wanted to learn more about economics, basic to all our foreign policy interests and involvements, and be able to better relate them to political and security considerations. I also felt that if the private sector didn't commit more of its resources to the development effort, you could forget about closing the gap between the rich northern nations and the poor southern ones. So I audited courses in development theory at the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences and courses in practical international involvement by free enterprise at the Business School. With this preparation, my idea was to find a job with a private firm engaged in development operations abroad in which my overall background in political dynamics would be valuable.

Well, a funny thing happened on my way to international business, and the assessment of this plan will have to wait for another day. I destroyed my own case study. But the important thing is that the Institute of Politics enabled someone to proceed on such a course by providing the time and the resources to make the transition feasible to undertake. And actually, given my presence and pursuits at the Institute, I was available -- alive and kicking enough -- to take a different kind of important job when that materialized.

The most automatic "in-and-outers," so to speak, are the lawyers and the academicians. They are the most experienced in making the transition back and forth from the government over a period of time because by their professional training they have a haven which they can return to, and one which relates closely to politics and government. This makes it tempting for the Institute to appoint lawyers and teachers as Fellows, but I would argue the opposite -- that the emphasis on selecting people for this experience should be placed on those who do not already have that built-in opportunity to move with relative quickness and ease to an outside spot. Those people who were in not for the Institute's unique and remarkable intent might not have a way of getting away from the stifling bureaucracy at all. Those who might not otherwise be able to fill a knowledge gap crucial to future service. Or those who might not stay alive politically or find that outside job without a place to pause for a moment to decide what to do next and how.

We all can think of several examples of men who have provided the superior leadership in our political life across a wide range of official positions. But I am thinking of those men who had that same potential for high calibre of public service who were never known, were never tapped, who were wasted, in effect, in some cases because they didn't get the enabling, helping hand at the key moment along the way. This, in my view, is what the Fellowship program at the Institute of Politics is principally about.

The most automatic "in-and-outers," so to speak, are the lawyers and the academicians, They are the most experienced in making the trasition back and forth from the government over a period of time because by their professional training they have a haven which they can return to, and one which relates closely to politics and government.