THE BUSYNESS OF CAMBRIDGE FACULTY

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I came to Harvard in September for a year, excited to be back on campus back among the young and the learned in a world of long and leisurely conversation where the beauty of truth is perceived and the love of truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth reigns. At last, after sixteen years in Washington. I would get away from practical, pragmatic, administrative minds and talk and think of other things. Life, after all, is not bounded by government and the issues of public policy and administration that we talk about at Brookings. Is not Washington the least and Cambridge the most intellectual of American cities?

No. Washington is politer, more relaxed, and more interested in men and ideas, whereas Cambridge is full of professors who are so busy trying to change the world, advertise themselves and endure their students that they have no time for people. What is more, many a man who was an ordinary, pleasant person in Washington turns into an instant Cambridgean upon receiving a faculty appointment.

Thus, my contacts with former colleagues and friends from Washington, New Haven, and New York, some of thirty years standing, went slowly or not at all. Phone calls were not returned notes were not answered, lunch dates were cancelled, not kept or late (without apology), and when at last a meeting was arranged, it was somehow rushed, distracted, and pleasureless, and the small promise that was made ("You'll get a notice of the meeting") was forgotten.

Several exceptions happen to be senior administrators at Harvard and M.I.T. Either their normal responsibilities or their normal kindness led them to return calls and actually to do what they said they would. Two Very Important Professors have been unfailingly kind, and several others have paused in their hectic courses to say "hello." I have attended two good and enjoyable seminars.

Nonetheless, the not outcome is that this has been, intellectually, the most arid year of my life, and that experience has been shared by other visitors. I would have spoken more with Cambridge faculty had I remained at Brookings; and I am looking forward to the friendly and stimulating discussions in Washington, where high officials respond to requests and will see anyone with a serious purpose: whatever time they give you is devoted entirely to your concern, and when they say that they will do something. they usually do it.

Why are faculty so much ruder, less reliable, less relaxed. and less accessible than government officials?

A small part of the explanation is the general amateurishness and in??mpetence of campus services (not to mention the discembobulations of Boston winters). Washington secretaries are professionals whereas Cambridge secretaries are amateurs or worse, students. The phone service is poor. the mail service is poor, copies of the CRIMSON, theatre tickets, and notices of meetings simply do not arrive with any reliability.

But the larger part is that for all of their faults and failures of imagination, government officials are not aut??ats, responsible to no one but themselves. Of course, there are exceptions, arrogant men who think they are moving and shaking creation and will be interrupted only by death. But most officials need allies: most recognize their responsibility to account to the public and to answer reasonable inquires: they can always be got at via the Congress, the press, or a word to a well-placed friend; the s???? cated and experienced know that influence comes and goes, that those who are handing money out today will be applying for some tomorrow, and that it never pays needlessly to offend anyone. And politicians are like actors: they bathe you in warmth and friendliness.

Faculty, however, have tenure politician lack, and Cambridge faculty have supposedly "arrived." Eisenhower could openly delegate half the presidency but a professor is not surposed to delegate his reading and writing (though, no doubt, some do). He is always fighting time, the great leveller. which will neither be extended nor compressed. Busymess is his true opium. In his Sisyphean labors, his merchandising of words, his endless ascent of unattainable peaks, it seems to me that he has lost touch not only with his students and his fellow men but with his own humanity.Program on Technology and Society