Holy Men and Carter Politicos

Speeches warmed the air of otherwise chilly December days last week as politicos, a film maker, a pornographic film star, and even an Indian holy man all descended on Harvard for panel discussions, informal talks and plain, out-and-out lectures.

The second-highest ranking lama in the world, and the head of the Kagyu order of Tibetan Buddhists spread the word to nearly 100 people at the Divinity School Tuesday night, but the appearance of Gwalya Karmapa was overshadowed by the more worldly doings of politicos like Hamilton Jordan and Jody Powell earlier and the week and film director Alan J. Pakula and porn star Harry Reems later.

Karmapa was invited to preach at the Div School by Dean Krister Stendhal and Harvey Cox, Thomas Professor of Divinity.

"We wanted to expose our students to a practitioner of religion, much the same way as Med School might want to expose its students to doctors of medicine," Cox said yesterday.

But before Karmapa, in the United States to open a Buddhist monastery administered to the faithful, Powell and Jordan participated in discussions for the more cynical in the Institute of Politics' second Conference on Campaign Decision-Making, held last weekend.

Twenty campaign managers from the staffs of all major presidential candidates gathered at the three-day conference and came to the same somewhat rueful but obvious conclusion--1976 was not the year of the Liberal.

The Institute of Politics will probably publish transcripts of the discussions, as it did of the first conference, held in 1972.

The Institute of Politics, which had planned the conference since September, did not pay any of the participants honorariums, but did cover their expenses, Janet Fraser, assistant director of the Institute and conference coordinator, said yesterday.

A different perspective on the 1976 campaigns was provided the next day, when three journalists took the floor in a Science Center forum to criticize their profession for its failure to grasp what they termed the real issues of the long march from Georgia.

Robert Scheer, who did the celebrated "adulterer in my heart" interview with Carter for Playboy, Robert Schrum, the speechwriter who quit the Carter campaign in a much publicized incident last spring, and Tom DeFrank, Newsweek's Ford campaign correspondent, all took turns immolating their chosen profession.

"The reporters approached each aspect of the election with a horse race philosophy--that it was a competition to be won or lost," DeFrank said Monday night.

The forum was planned long before by the Harvard-Radcliffe Democratic Club, president Thomas Keane '78 said yesterday.