Harvard Rejects Alliance With Cambridge Project

Harvard will not join M.I.T. as an institutional sponsor of the Defense Department-funded Cambridge Project.

Edwin B. Newman, professor of Psychology and chairman of the Harvard participants in the Project, yesterday withdrew the request of the Project's Harvard-M.I.T. advisory board to President Pusey for the appointment of Harvard representatives to the official Project policy board. Newman had consulted with 10 of the 12 advisory board members about this decision.

Newman's announcement-made at yesterday's Faculty meeting-was part of an agreement he had worked out with two Faculty members opposed to the Cambridge Project: Herbert C. Kelman, Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, and Mark Ptashne, lecturer on Blochemistry and Molecular Biology.

For his part, Kelman-who followed Newman as a speaker at yesterday's meeting-agreed to withdraw a resolution against official Harvard participation in the Cambridge Project which he had planned to introduce at the meeting. "Now that the request for institutional participation has been withdrawn," Kelman told the Faculty, "we are prepared to withdraw our resolution-not because most of our reservations about the Cambridge Project have been answered, but because the resolution has become moot."

Anthony G. Oettinger '51, professor of Linguisties and Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Mathematics, took the floor shortly afterwards and accused Newman, Kelman, and Ptashne of having made "an obscene deal: they have managed to sweep under the rug a number of important issues raised by the Cambridge Project."

Majority Member

Oettinger was a member of the majority of a Faculty subcommittee which recommended that Harvard join M.I.T. as an institutional sponsor of the Cambridge Project. Kelman was in the minority on that subcommittee.

"The Defense Department issue is a red herring," Oettinger said last night. "Institutional participation in the Cambridge Project would not imply endorse-ment of the Defense Department, and there are other important issues involved in the Project."

"For example," Oettinger said, "are we going to let M. L. T., or the Defense Department, decide on privacy safeguards for the Project? The arguments against the Cambridge Project are arguments for keeping it out in the open-and not abandoning our colleagues."

Oettinger said that he "probably" will introduce a resolution at the next Faculty meeting-on February 10-"in order to allow the Faculty to consider the issue of institutional participation at greater depth."

Newman told the Faculty yesterday that official Harvard participation is not "essential to the operation of the Cambridge Project... [Harvard-M. L. T.] participation must be on an equal basis [but] we can set up machinery to do that without external authorization."

Kelman and Ptashne focused their criticism of the Cambridge Project on its Defense Department sponsorship. "It is the function of the University-and especially of its social scientists-," Kelman argued, "to engage in independent critical analysis of the society, including the role of the military within that society. There is some concern that commitments on the order of the Cambridge Project would weaken the University's capacity for such independent analysis."

Serious Thought

Kelman urged his colleagues "to give serious thought to the advisability of their own participation" in the Cambridge Project. But neither he nor Ptashne suggested that Harvard forbid individual participation in the Project; "I feel strongly that the decision... must be left to the judgment of each individual," Kelman said.

The Faculty did not have time yesterday to discuss a resolution of opposition to the Cambridge Project which had been placed on the docket by Hilary W. Putnam, professor of Philosophy. That resolution, which the Faculty will take up on February 10, says "that it is the sense of the Faculty that no member of the Harvard community should... have any connection to Project Cambridge."