Slow boat to Washington

It was a favorite image during the Kennedy administration: busloads of Harvard professors converging on Washington to serve as advisors to a president, who, as an alumnus of Harvard, always remained enamored of his alma mater.

The Harvard-Washington axis, as it became known, flourished during the Kennedy and Johnson years. No matter where you looked, there was a Harvard personality in a top government job: Arthur M. Schlesinger Jr. '38, former professor of History at Harvard, was special assistant to the President; Edwin O. Reischauer, University Professor, was ambassador to Japan; John Kenneth Galbraith, Warburg Professor of Economics Emeritus, was ambassador to India; McGeorge Bundy, former dean of the Faculty, was the President's national security advisor; Archibald Cox '34, Williston Professor of Law, was solicitor-general. The list was seemingly endless.

In appearance, Harvard involvement in the campaign to elect former Georgia Gov. Jimmy Carter to the White House rivals that of the Kennedy era, although Carter is no Harvard alumnus. And, at least at first, not too many members of this academic community were particularly swept away by him.

Jimmy Carter's now-fabled desire to avoid overt reliance on the traditional Boston-Washington axis in this year's presidential campaign consequently doesn't appear to be ruffling too many feathers at Harvard. What does concern many of Carter's hundreds of newfound advisors, however, is that their massive output may not receive adequate attention, by dint of its sheer bulk.

Carter, who publicly projects the most populist image of any presidential candidate in recent memory, has gone about the task of assembling his cadre of policy advisors in an eclectic manner--and on such a large scale--that makes it difficult to tell which players will still be with the team if Carter wins the election.

The Carter campaign has already generated what one advisor estimated to be hundreds of thousands of pages of documents and position papers, a large portion of which originated in Cambridge.

The papers have been solicited from members of Carter's approximately 12 task forces, and, according to Harry K. Schwartz '55, Carter's national task force director, they are sifted through, refined, and summarized long before they reach the candidate. If they present nothing worthy of Carter's attention they are discarded or returned to their sender, Schwartz says.

The number of individuals who have been asked to serve in some capacity on one of Carter's task forces is so large that no one in Atlanta, Washington, or Plains knows it off-hand.

"The term 'task force' is actually a misnomer," says Schwartz. "These task forces are not really committees, they do not produce white papers, they tend to be low-visibility--pools of individuals with expertise in various areas."

That seems to be the beauty of the Carter task force operation. Carter can simultaneously give the appearance of breaking the insidious Harvard-Washington nexus while still involving unprecedented numbers of Harvard people on his task forces and advisory panels.

The experience of several Harvard faculty members whose support has been sought by the Carter-Mondale ticket tends to corroborate the notion that Carter is not only avoiding sole reliance on one institution, but he is also shunning long-term commitments to his campaign advisors. There are few, if any individuals, from Harvard or elsewhere, who are currently earmarked for "automatic" Carter administration appointments.

The entire Carter advisory operation to date is described by Schwartz as "building Rolodex files which provide instant access to a funnel of expertise."

Milton Katz, Stimson Professor of Law, has perhaps a longer standing commitment to the Carter campaign than anyone from Harvard currently involved in advising the ticket. He has been serving in what he describes as "a general advisory capacity" to Carter since September, 1975, and had been in touch with Carter by mail several months before that.

"Last September, Jimmy came to my house for dinner," Katz explains. In July, Jimmy reciprocated by inviting Katz to his large scale foreign policy briefing session in Plains, Georgia. Katz, who is the chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Carnegie Endowment for International-relations-oriented organizations, was one of only two Harvard faculty members invited to Plains for any of the briefing sessions. (The other was Robert Pastor, a research assistant at the Center for International Affairs.)

The complete list of those invited to Plains, in fact, reads more like a comprehensive guide to American academicians and researchers than excerpts from a Harvard course.

"A good many people during the early scramble were associated with other candidates," says Katz. "In some cases it [the relative absence of any Harvard Plains-invitees] is accidental; in some cases it represents a feeling that the Carter people want to have a broad representative group.

Schwartz concurs: "The Carter campaign is just filled with old Harvard people, including myself. We've tried to break out of the traditional pattern, although we still have a preponderance from the places you'd expect."

Abram Chayes '43, professor of Law, the director of George McGovern's foreign policy task forces in 1972, says he was appointed to Carter's foreign policy group partly because he supported Carter in the Massachusetts primary. (Not many others did.)

Chayes, who met with Carter during his brief campaign swing through Massachusetts prior to this state's Democratic primary in March, says he's "sure a lot of these people will find their way down to Washington," but quickly adds, "I expect to be here for a long, long time."

Alan Dershowitz, professor of Law, received a note from Carter last year praising the contents of his article in The New York Times on criminal justice.

Dershowitz, who is an outspoken advocate of broad changes in the nation's criminal justice system, was later appointed the coordinator of Carter's task force on crime.

Dershowitz says few Harvard representatives are in Carter's highest advisory ranks largely because "Harvard wasn't overly enthusiastic about the Carter candidacy early on."

"Harvard is always much too represented in these things," Dershowitz says. "It's marvelously refreshing to see some brilliant people from elsewhere involved."

Neither Dershowitz nor Katz could predict whether his key advisory role would ultimately result in a Washington appointment. Dershowitz was emphatic in expressing the desire to remain in Cambridge. ("If my participation succeeds in helping them during the campaign though, that's fine.")

The search for Carter advisors, Schwartz says, culminated in "tapping the newer people--identifying the women and the young thinkers and bringing them in."

Dorothy S. Zinberg, a research associate in the Program for Science and International Affairs and an assistant professor of Psychology, is a member of Carter's science policy task force.

"All in all, I feel very positive about my involvement so far," she says. "I am so committed to the goals Carter has, I'm willing to work even if the personal gain for me is zero."

Despite her enthusiastic support for Carter's ideals, however, Zinberg does express some reservations about the way they may be implemented.

"I do think that I am part of the affirmative action delegation, although I think he is genuinely committed to bringing in women, and tapping their resources," she says.

Zinberg worries that much of the 600,000-plus pages of science policy recommendations already generated by her task force may never see the light of the day.

"We'll just have to wait and see if there isn't just one big paper shredder at the end of the pipeline," she says.

Zinberg, like virtually all of her colleagues in the Carter advisory camp, does not envision any expansion of her present role after a victory in November.

"I can assure you," she says. "I'll still be at 9' Div Avenue."

Zinberg has been called upon by the Carter forces to draft a paper on her interpretation of the function of science education, to critique a report on issues confronting scientists which task force coordinator Lewis Branscomb, IBM's vice president and chief scientist, drafted, and to participate in a science briefing with the Democratic candidate before he debates President Ford.

Her role in the advisory effort so far stands in contrast to that of fellow science policy task force member Harvey Brooks, McKay Professor of Applied Physics.

So far, Brooks says, his involvement has been limited to a couple of phone conversations with Branscomb, and subsequent invitations to submit papers on science policy. Brooks has not yet taken Branscomb up on any of those invitations, but he says his role may expand as the campaign continues.

Charles Haar, Brandeis Professor of Law, is the coordinator of the housing and land use task force, one of the few advisory panels that has actually convened as a group.

Haar, who met with Carter two weeks ago, says he is encouraged by the amount of input his group has been granted thus far, although "they haven't taken everything we've recommended into consideration."

Marcia Guttentag, lecturer on Education, is a member of Carter's health task force, and has helped draft policy recommendations for the increased involvement of women in the field of mental health. Guttentag terms her role a "continuing involvement" with the Carter-Mondale ticket, and adds that she is "very impressed by their very systematic effort to locate women with important skills throughout the country."

"Carter has been going after people who can deliver substantively, not based on place of origin," she adds, "and he has shown great taste."

Martin Feldstein, professor of Economics and a member of Carter's economic policy task force, says he believes that the role that all the task forces play in the formulation of policy initiatives will diminish as the campaign wears on.

"There will have to be more time for campaigning, and less time for drafting position papers," he says.

Feldstein is more definite than many of his colleagues on the role he feels task force members will play in a Carter-Mondale administration. "If the ticket wins, they'll have several people to help work on their policy; there will be jobs for a number of permanent staff members," he explains.

It is clear that no one in Cambridge is openly lusting after an advisory position in the Carter administration. Tacit in virtually all Harvard-Carter advisors' statements concerning their own futures with Carter is the understanding that Carter seems to want to remain without strings at least for now. If he really is beholden to no one, he would in all probability select his closest advisors from the ranks of those from whose help he has profited most during the campaign.

"I take it for granted that Carter, a man of the people, would like to draw on as wide a selection of people as possible in his campaign," explains Katz.

And if you can extrapolate from what appears to be the prevailing sentiment in the Carter camp these days, there probably won't be busloads of Harvard faculty members making the jaunt down to Washington next January.

In the meantime, as Zinberg puts it, "a lot of people used to be getting deference and action who don't now; but everybody is working, and I feel very positive about it."