The Early Sixties Bring Avid Support For JFK, But a Long Week for Pusey

Chapter II

"American Presidential campaigns rarely rise above the level of polite name-calling and Madison Avenue sloganeering."

WITH THAT PRONOUNCEMENT The Crimson launched its coverage of the 1960 campaign. Since 1917, Crimson editors had scattered through the country every fourth year, covering conventions, primaries, trends and candidates. The politics of the paper had shifted from conservative to liberal in the space of a few decades, and no longer did Crimson editors support the Republican ticket. John F. Kennedy '40 was a former Crimson editor, the holder of a recent Harvard honorary degree, and the sponsor of the bill to abolish the loyalty oath for NDEA loan applicants, which The Crimson has ardently supported. Although Kennedy's connection with the paper had been tenuous, at best--he never made much of his membership on the Business Board--Crimson editors felt a sentimental attachment to him. In comparison with the other candidates before the Convention in Los Angeles, and in stark contrast to the Republican standard bearer, the young Massachusetts Senator and Overseer seemed the only logical choice. As we see in its endorsement editorial, The Crimson made its choice for President perfectly clear in the Fall of 1960. The campaign coverage was extensive, ranging from peripatetic coverage of the candidates on tour to parodies of the Kennedy-Nixon debates by J. Lee Auspitz '63, who assured readers that Kennedy would pay for the tunnel to the Vatican with his own money.

David Halberstam '55, the former Managing Editor, has pointed out the weaknesses of the Kennedy approach to foreign policy. The "best and the brightest," the Harvard professors and the liberal intellectuals who made up Kennedy's Kitchen Cabinet, often lacked practical experience and understanding of Realpolitik. But the bad fruit of the Kennedy era did not become manifest until long after Camelot had passed away, and The Crimson of the 1960-63 period ran a love affair with the White House.

Kissinger Calls Crisis

Soviet Miscalculation

read a headline during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Crimson backed the President in his execution of foreign policy, and so did the associate professor of Government, Dr. Kissinger. In the days when his name was not a household word, and his consulting with the government was on a far less grand scale than his current employment. Henry A. Kissinger '50 was a frequent topic in The Crimson. "Our sincerity is not at issue, our competence might be," Kissinger told a reporter about the nuclear test ban treaty. And almost every week at one point. Kissinger bombarded the paper with notices that he was cancelling his subscription because of The Crimson's inaccuracy. His letter writing campaign seemed to be his favorite hobby in the days before he worked his way up the ladder to fame.

The Kennedy administration deprived Harvard of its senior dean, McGeorge Bundy of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. While Bundy was to go on to notoriety in his later career, his reputation as dean was high. The Faculty liked and admired him; in fact, they favored him over the President. The Memorial Church controversy had eroded much of Pusey's support, and Bundy's charismatic personality had naturally attracted support. So, when Bundy went to Washington to assume the post which Kissinger would hold not many years later, Pusey decided to assume the dean's office himself. After almost a year of Pusey's multiple officeholding, the paper began a weeklong series of editorials criticizing his stewardship, citing "a growing feeling among the Faculty that the President does not understand his University."

The week long attack, which began on April 23 of 1962, cited Pusey's performance in a number of issues, small and large, and urged, among other things, that he appoint a dean of the Faculty immediately. Although the language of the editorials seems mild in light of recent years, the University as a whole was shocked by their appearance, and the letters column was flooded with protests from Pusey's partisans ranging from the dean of Public Health to the acting preacher to the University. The tactic of an elongated criticism of Pusey's conduct in office has remained controversial over the past decade: shortly after the pieces appeared, however, he appointed a new dean.

The Crimson's affection for John F. Kennedy by no means extended to his younger brother. In the 1962 Senatorial election in Massachusetts, Edward M. Kennedy '54 ('56) ran in the Democratic Primary against State Attorney General, Edward McCormack, whom he defeated. In the final election, Kennedy was opposed by Republican George Cabot Lodge '50, now professor of Business Administration at Harvard, and Independent H. Stuart Hughes, Gurney-Professor of History. Kennedy soundly trounced both opponents, although his only experience to date had been as a dollar-a-year assistant district attorney in Middlesex County after passing his bar examination. Commending his honesty and dedication to principle. The Crimson endorsed Hughes. After the Kennedy victory, the paper editorialized:

The Crimson cannot join those newspapers across the state who today are expressing hope for Edward Kennedy's emergence as a good United States Senator. A few "right votes" in the Senate will not justify the abuses he has already perpetrated....

On Page One, Mark DeWolfe Howe predicted that Kennedy would make a poor Senator. The great legal thinker had worked for the Hughes campaign, and joined in the Harvard community's general low opinion of the new Senator.

DRUGS BEGAN TO ASSUME a new importance in society in the early Sixties, when they suddenly became the property of the respectable middle class. At Harvard, two denizens of William James Hall, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, were using the "mind-expanding" drug pscilocybin in experiments on students. Andrew L. Weil '64, now Andrew E. Weil M.D., was The Crimson's drug expert at the time even though he was also a Poonie--and did the bright, relentless, comprehensible reporting which led to the eventual banning of the experiments and termination of Leary and Alpert.

The controversy spilled over more than a year. The Faculty debated, and the Administration issued ukases. Elliot Perkins '23, the redoubtable Master of Lowell House, probably spoke for almost the entire Faculty when he said: "Undergraduates shouldn't be involved in this or any other damned experiments." The vote of the Faculty to ban drug experiments made Crimson headlines, and eventually led to the termination of Alpert's contract, when he illegally administered the drugs to students and left Cambridge during term time without permission--and without making arrangements for his classes. The Crimson had played a large role in exposing the goings-on in William James.

The Kennedy assassination brought to an end a Crimson era, and spelled the same numb disbelief and uncomprehending shock at Harvard which it caused all over the country. Although the paper remained liberal and Democratic, the war policies of the Johnson Administration caused increasing alienation among the editors. At Harvard, a small, left wing group called Tocsin gave way to a newer group called SDS, which became more militant as the war escalated and the Executive Branch increased the level of warfire without consent of Congress, or the people. In 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara was surrounded and detained by a group of students; punishments were handed out by the Administrative Board. Later, a recruiter for the Dow Chemical Company was held in a room in Pierce Hall against his will; here again, punishments were assessed on the students involved, and also on a large group of students who had signed a petition asking to be given equal blame with the actual perpetrators. The College was entering a dark period.

AS STRANGE AS IT seems, Dean Monro and Dean Fred Glimp after him, had encouraged competition between the Administration and SDS on the softball field. The games went well for several seasons, but the political situation in the nation had deteriorated to such a point that it seemed unlikely that students and administrators could ever see eye to eye on the role of the University. By April 1969, the situation was unsalvageable. While SDS and others demanded an end to military and military-industrial recruiting. Harvard expansion into poor communities, the ROTC program, and other connections between the University and war-related activities, administrators walked a fine line of distinctions and differentiations in seeking to reach a satisfactory balance of demands. The wheels of bureaucracy move with excruciating tardiness, and this bureaucracy could not move fast enough to satisfy one segment of SDS. Although the group as a whole had voted to take no such action, a fraction of those in attendance at a SDS meeting on April 8, 1969, decided to occupy a building the next day. Shortly before noon on April 10, they did so, ejecting the deans in University Hall, and renaming the building "Che Guevara Hall". The crowds of students who gathered outside overwhelmingly opposed the occupation: there was talk of football players and other able-bodied students coming to remove the occupiers. Then, at dawn the next day, with no advance warning to the Faculty or the students. President Pusey ordered in the police. By the hundreds came police arrayed in combat gear and ready for violent action. At dawn, they marched in and cleared the building with night sticks and buttering ranis. Quite a few students were injured, a few seriously; a significant number of reporters were arrested and tossed in jail. In seconds, the mood of the University changed from anti-occupier to anti-Administration.

The Crimson was out with an extra soon after the Bust, just as it had issued an extra the day before, following the takeover Crimson editors were among the group of reporters from the most distinguished publications in the country who were arrested, and Crimson photographers were among the many whose cameras were smashed by police billy clubs.

The anger which many members of the University community, students and teacher alike, felt at Pusey's unilateral, unprecedented action, was reflected in the editorial columns of the Crimson that Spring. The mass meetings held in Harvard Stadium occasioned some of the paper's most thorough reporting, and relations with the Administration deteriorated even more. For a generation of Crimson editors, the act of summoning riot-equipped police to the Harvard Yard stood as tantamount to treason.

The aftermath of the Spring of 1969 brought many baffling moments for the executives of The Crimson. James M. Fallows '70, the president in 1969, recounted part of the aftermath in a piece which is reprinted on page 24 of this Centennial issue. The task of making sense out of the post-1969 period is left to the full version of this Centennial book. For now, suffice it to say that The Crimson has made its own peace with the events of that year, and remains steadfast in its obligation to serve Harvard as a source of independent comment.

THE NIXON ADMINISTRATION did nothing to alleviate the seriousness of the Indochina war in the first years. After the 1970 invasion of Cambodia. The Crimson covered the activities of the Harvard people who went to Washington to lobby, for peace. Michael E. Kinsley '72, would win a Dana Reed, Prize and national reprinting for his article on the Harvard Faculty who went to the Capital to confront their old colleague, Henry Kissinger. The Spring brought riots as well, spinoffs from large scale antiwar demonstrations in Boston which caused damage of varying degrees to Harvard Square.

The selection of a successor to President Pusey engaged the attention of the University in 1970-71. Scott W. Jacobs '71, the paper's Executive Editor, covered the search for a year, securing inside information more than once and publishing lists of the candidates on the Corporation's docket at frequent intervals. When Derek C. Bok was selected as President, Jacobs was ready to tell Harvard--and the world, through his connection with Newsweek--everything there was to be known about the Law School Dean and the reasons for his selection.

The Crimson's Law School correspondent. Robert W. Decherd '73, became The Crimson's Presidential correspondent when Bok moved to Massachusetts Hall. Shortly thereafter, Decherd became the Crimson's President, and has informed the Harvard community of the goings on in the corridors of power ever since.

AS THE FIRST CENTURY ends, Decherd's Board, which master-minded the Centennial celebrations, prepares to retire. Daniel Swanson '74, is already prepared to take over the business of running the paper, as soon as the last murmurs of the festival fade away. The people who made the ceremonies possible--Andrew P. Corty '74, the hundredth anniversary czar Pat Sorrento, the shop foreman whose patience with dilatory copy makes Job seem a piker; Miss Eunice Ficket, the Business Board's conscience, soul and spirit, who has kept the details running; and those whose names have been forgotten--all will pick up the pattern of their lives after they recover from the partying. They have done well.

This narrative is hardly complete--time, space, and human frailty assure it could never be. It has been, to now, a rough narrative of what has gone on at The Crimson since the last time the record was brought up to date, but hardly as complete a narrative perusal of recent bound volumes of the paper would provide. Let me encourage those who have the slightest interest in the subject to pursue it further, and let me offer the following chapters as a rough history of the first three quarters of the paper.An editor by the linotype machines during the mid-sixties.