The Kennedys And The Library

IF YOU LISTEN to the Kennedy Library Corporation statements about why the museum will not be built in Harvard Square, the blood pumps, the jaws drop and the tears plummet. It appears that at last the Kennedys and all other powerful outside interest involved with the museum were stopped cold by a few humble neighborhood groups. When Stephen Smith, head of the corporation, said two weeks ago that it would not be "in keeping with the nature of this memorial for it to open in an atmosphere of discord and controversy" he signalled a rash of jubilation and community congratulations reminiscent of the Hebrews' best, after David slew Goliath.

But before the neighborhoods get a little too ambitions they should realize that rather than having nocked off one giant, what they have actually done is simply stunned a Gargantua while arousing two others--Harvard and the City Council. These two sleepers when united with the Kennedys could pull off anything--even to the point of bringing at least one form of a museum back to the Square.

The community groups may have the legal muscle to stave off any sort of Harvard-council coalition that the Kennedys could muster. The curious federal law that gives anyone the right to challenge an environmental impact statement, could give neighborhood Ten the power to tie-up the subsequent proceedings for at least five years, "as Smith unhappily points out. But more important the Cambridge neighborhood groups have the legitimacy of begin on the defensive to the Library's threats and community walls bedecked with screaming headlines of Kennedys vs. the little people are very safe pickets to hide behind. Nobody wants to be at the throttle when the whole of Brattle St. chain themselves to the museum bulldozers.

HOWEVER, THE situation as it stands the complex only two options--keep the archives in Harvard Sq. or move the whole complex to another site--is less of a victory than the community groups bargained for. It would seem illogical for the Kennedys to want to split the library and museum sites and therefore dramatically increase the costs of construction. What the Kennedys do by putting all of Cambridge in suspended animation for sixty days is force President Bok's hand--for it is he who stands to loss the most right now if the complex leaves Harvard Square.

It is Harvard's 22 acres of free land on which the University plans to build the Kennedy Institute that the community is against. And because Massachusetts granted Harvard the rights to the land conditional that the complex or at least the library be built there also. Harvard stands to lose a valuable parcel if the Kennedy corporation decides to uproot the complex. It was only a little less than 20 years ago the former President Nathan M. Pusey '28 tried and failed to buy the land from Penn Central as a first choice for the site of Mather House.

So by advertising that they intend to build the museum and possibly the archives elsewhere, the Kennedys will get the University to do their dirty work of muzzling the community groups. Bok's apparently naive comments berating neighborhood associations for working against the archives--something almost everyone in the community has endorsed--could simply be Harvard's first outward reaction to a Kennedy reprimand to "get with it or lose your site too."

"I think Bok and Dean Price have done nothing. I've seen no bold statement, seen nothing whatsoever," one government professor who declined to be named said last week. "I'm appalled at the performance of Harvard in trying to keep the complex in Harvard Square." But Harvard has already made a few feeble attempts in the past--either by trying to circumvent the anti-Kennedy museum task force by providing $95,000 for a feasibility study that would be more favorable to a museum, or by pushing for a Red Line extension to Brattle St. that would chalk up a transportational plus for locating the whole conglomeration across from Eliot House. But these attempts were foiled--not by shrewd Harvard watchers but by engineers and residents who saw Harvard's actions as impractical and unnecessary complication.

HARVARD HAS NOT been as overt as the city council in answering the Kennedy arm-twisting. Immediately after Smith's announcement, Cambridge Mayor, Walter J. Sullivan, corralled four other councilors, and couched in the rhetoric of getting more Cambridge people involved in the task force, the mayor drafted a resolution to remove the agency from the city manager's office and dump it in his own lap. Although Sullivan didn't get his way, he did gain the right to stock the task force with twelve people, possibly people aligned with his view favoring the museum. And when Sullivan goes to Smith this weekend to offer his last ditch stand to keep the archives and the museum with ammunition that the task force could provide a report favorable to the complex, it may be enough for Smith to reconsider his decision. Task force members who are opponents of the complex still not over the museum victory "euphoria" expressed happiness in Sullivan's compromise motion. But when they are outvoted on Library matters by Sullivan's selections and pro-complex businessmen already on the agency, they may change their opinions.

Although there is no hardcore evidence, it appears that in the final analysis it won't be Smith at all but Sen. Edward M. Kennedy '54 (D.-Mass.), Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis and the other Kennedy friends on the Library advisory board who will decide where and when to place the museum. If Harvard and the council can't generate the support to circumvent community opposition to the museum or at least to the library and institute the Kennedys will probably say the hell with it and retreat to another site. It was Jackie Kennedy Onassis who favored the subway yards site and not Jack, who preferred the B-school; and the legitimacy of Jack's martyrdom got her the land in the first place. She has worn out that legitimacy, as even the Kennedy's old Brattle St. friends are against the complex now, but the Kennedys still have an active interest in keeping everything in Harvard Sq. and were disappointed at the community opposition. But to the Kennedys the Square's relevance hasn't diminished any--and there seems to be little Kennedy relevance to such "spectacular" sites as the three in Amherst, as Smith claims.

THE SHORT TERM view does credit the local community groups with remarkable cohesion in an otherwise politically fragmented town. It is a cohesion that is based solely on the glue that forms when individuals' homes and ways of life are threatened. It seems ironic that the Kennedy Corporation would have spent so much time editing the environmental impact statement, only to have it discovered by the rich lawyers of Neighborhood Ten and Ten is taking advantage of the situation in the courts.

But rather than letting them win the court battles, the impact suit only gives Ten hundreds of feet of community red-tape and an on-par bargaining position with the Kennedys' Harvard and the council. Community leaders last week indicated a preference to sit down and so some hard bargaining--but it would be to Harvard and the council's advantage to stir up Cambridge antagonism against those who took the museum away before sitting down at the tables. And it is a cinch that if the pro-complex forces can coalesce successfully, then the council will at least get its library, and Harvard its tax-free institute. And if the Kennedys can pull stints successfully behind a Harvard-council smokescreen--maybe we haven't yet seen the end of the museum in Harvard Square.