Clakins, Son ROTC Talk

(As follows are two versions of a discussion yesterday morning between Richard E. Hyland '69-3, a member of the Strike Steering Committee, and Hugh D. Calkins '45, a member of the Harvard Corporation. Although Hyland is a member of the CRIMSON, he was not acting as a CRIMSON representative in the discussion).

Hyland

The following are direct quotations from Hugh Calkins, a member of the Harvard Corporation, given in an interview with a student in the Kirkland House Dining Room, on the morning of Wednesday, April 16, 1969.

Student: "If all of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and students voted to abolish ROTC, would you?"

Calkins: "No, it's not written within the Faculty's jurisdiction."

Student: "Do you realize that if the Faculty voted to abolish ROTC and you refused, you'd have 100 Faculty resignations the next day?"

Calkins: "Yes, we do, we know what we're doing."

Calkins: "If the Faculty votes against ROTC, it is clearly a statement against the Vietnam war. We will not accept it regardless of the consequences. We will not accept the pressure of anyone to get rid of ROTC because we think it's good thing...

"We would never delegate our authority to decide on ROTC to any other group. We would never, in effect, say that any issue was "too hot" for us to handle. We would, however, taken into consideration the opinions of the various Faculties, 11 of them, in making our decision.

"We are certainly more concerned with the substance of guaranteeing minority rights to those who want to join ROTC. If we have to make contracts to do that we will...

"We have to co-operate with the government and we cannot refuse that cooperation merely because of details. We think it's a necessary thing to train Harvard people for the Army in order to have both civilian and military officers."

Calkins also told us about another area of University cooperation with the Government:

Calkins "Every year the Harvard Business School trains 200 Defense Department employees for management."

Calkins

At breakfast this morning in Kirkland House I spent nearly an hour talking with students about the current crisis. I tried to explain fully my views on ROTC, Harvard expansion, and the structure of the University.

The SDS has published what it claims are "direct quotations" from what I said. Some are; some are not. Those that are not distort what I said so drastically I am forced to conclude the distortion was deliberate.

As to the significance of Faculty and student votes on ROTC, what I actually said was:

* The Corporation regarded the Faculty vote on academic credit and Faculty status as controlling.

* The Corporation would want to protect the right of a minority of students to participate in ROTC as an extracurricular activity even if a majority of students and Faculty voted otherwise. What the Corporation would actually do in the unlikely event the Faculty passed such a vote was a point I specifically left open.

* ROTC was not exclusively within the jurisdiction of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, because, for example, the Law School also had a substantial number of students enrolled.

As to the consequence of the Corporation not following a Faculty vote on ROTC, the SDS quotation is accurate. Of course, I would regret losing valued Faculty members in such a case.

As to the first paragraph of the long quotation, I said (and I firmly believe) that the Corporation, in those areas of University affairs which are its responsibility, should not and would not take an action which could be justified only on the ground that it reflected opposition to the Vietnam war.

I made it clear that while I oppose the war and favor this country leaving Vietnam, I do not think it is proper to cause the University as such to take a position of political protest against the war.

The paragraph about delegation is substantially accurate. So is the statement about contracts. But the SDS reporter failed to note that I added (somewhat to his consternation) that I thought the permission Harvard granted to SDS to use Emerson Hall and other buildings was also a form of contract of the kind his proposed ROTC resolution sought to prohibit between Harvard and the Defense Department.

The statement about cooperation with government is also accurate. I certainly did not say or imply that the Army can't get along without Harvard men, although I did say that thought it a good thing that some officers come into service through civilian college programs rather than purely military academies.

The final statement about the Business School is accurate.

The 200 words "quoted" by the SDS represent only a small part of what was a long and, to me, helpful conversation with probably a dozen students.

I intend to continue to talk with students as much as I can whenever I am in Cambridge, despite the obvious risk that one of them will turn out to be a reporter more interested in proving his point than in reflecting accurately what I say.

[Contacted early this morning by the CRIMSON, Calkins would not say whether the Bruner resolution on ROTC currently before the Faculty represented "a position of political protest against the war." He said that the original Bruner resolution was badly designed in some sections, and that he understood that it was being redrafted. "I wouldn't want to telegraph what the Corporation's action on the Bruner resolution would be," Calkins said. --Ed.]