How Does Robert Kiely Feel?

ROBERT J. KIELY feels embittered about the scandals that have become associated with his name and thinks that the overall effect of the revelations will be a negative one. According to close friends who have talked with him in the last week, Kiely does not dispute the facts of either controversy: his exercise of influence in getting jobs for a close friend and his selective revealing of exam questions in English 166. What's more, friends say, he believes that in retrospect both actions were probably unwise. But above all, he feels he has been singled out for attack for actions which are considered commonplace at Harvard, and that these attacks will only hurt the cause of liberal education reform he feels he stands for.

The reason he has been singled out, he tells friends, is that he is seen as an aggressive, ambitious climber of the administrative ladder. Although over the past two years he has accumulated an astounding number of administrative feathers in his cap--including master of Adams House, associate dean of the Faculty for undergraduate education, chairman of the General Education Committee, and chairman of the Committee on Undergraduate Education--he feels his in seeking these posts have been misunderstood.

He denies frequently and emphatically the persistent rumor that he wants to be president of Harvard. His real ambition, he says, his own personal conception of his life's work, is to be an outstanding professor of English, from the standpoint of both teaching and scholarship. He is proud of his two books and gets great satisfaction from the large attendance and favorable student reception his courses have gotten.

He often looks upon his deanship as a burden, and accordingly, has put a three-year limit, ending in June 1975, on his tenure in office. Of his Adams House mastership, he tells friends: "I can't bring myself to look upon this as home." His family feels more comfortable in their summer home in New Hampshire, where his two young children don't have to reckon with the dirt and commotion of the city.

But he sees his attempts at educational reform as a duty worth the added burdens. He perceives a serious disjunction at Harvard between ideals and reality and believes that if he doesn't try to change it, he is approving of it by acquiescence. According to one friend, his attitude is: If I don't do it, I can't expect anyone else to.

AS PROOF that a desire for reform. and not ambition, is behind his administrative rise, Kiely tells friends he has turned down several other attractive administrative offers. He was considered for the headmastership of a prestigious prep school, but told the selection committee he wasn't interested. When President Bok and Dean Rosovsky tentatively floated the idea of Kiely's taking on a provost-like position at Harvard, Kiely said he didn't want it.

One great source of Kiely's bitterness, friends say, is that his accomplishments as dean have passed nearly unnoticed--a great deal of his time has been taken up by small but important details. Kiely's friends say he has been instrumental in the negotiations to keep John Finley teaching at Harvard past retirement age. He has also worked to try to keep outstanding teachers here even though they were denied tenure for not publishing enough scholarly writing. Other undergraduate-oriented projects, requiring time-consuming bargaining to get money out of the Faculty budget, have taken up much of his efforts.

HE PRIVATELY acknowledges that releasing the English 166 questions without good publicity was probably careless--but just careless and nothing more. He maintains he had no ulterior motive in mind, such as helping out Adams House residents.

On the issue of patronage, he sees his actions as much more defensible than what goes on elsewhere in the University. He says that Father Berryman is a close friend, an intellectual companion and a man who shares many of his ideals and moral beliefs. Last year, when Berryman was a teaching assistant in Expository Writing and a resident tutor in Eliot House, Kiely tells friends, he felt that the positions had too low a standing for a man of Berryman's age. (Berryman, who is in his forties, is nearly ten years older than Kiely.) Kiely therefore decided to look for higher positions for Berryman, first as senior tutor in Adams, and then as a teacher at the Divinity School.

But Kiely insists to friends that he would not have even tried to get these appointments for Berryman were he not totally convinced of his qualifications. This impression of Berryman, Kiely maintains, was in way influenced by their friendship.

BUT KIELY recognizes patronage as a problem at Harvard. The problem here, as with other situations at Harvard, he says, is that there is no overall guiding precept, no moral basis underlying University policy. This lack of unified standards enables the conservative tenured Faculty members--who he occasionally refers to as Harvard's "fat cats"--to exercise undue power over educational policy.

According to his friends, Kiely is most concerned that the scrutiny he has been subjected to will only strengthen the hands of these "fat cats," who care little about anything besides their own research and personal comfort. He fears the criticism he has received will discourage any other Faculty members from participating in undergraduate life and concerning themselves with undergraduate education.

Kiely tells friends that one possible scenario that may develop as a result of the controversy is an exodus of senior faculty from the Houses to more comfortable and isolated suburban residences. If this scenario comes to pass, he feels that the House system will be inalterably damaged and undergraduate education will suffer a major loss--a loss, he believes, few Faculty members will mourn.