A Night at the Forum

GRAHAM K. ALLISON JR. '62, dean of the Kennedy School, had good reason to be angry last Monday night. Secretary of Defense Harold Brown's soporific advertisement for SALT II--beamed live and in color to the largest crowd in the K-School Forum's history--had suddenly gone haywire. An elaborate farce had turned into melodrama. While 20 of their comrades picketed outside, two protesters from the Revolutionary Communist Party (RCP) had managed to smuggle themselves into the building, and one began screaming at Brown ten minutes into his speech. All those plans, all those arrangement... screwed up by two jerks from Dorchester.

But it's possible that more than the immediate disruption struck a raw nerve in Allison; an unwelcome feeling of deja vu may have contributed. Thirteen years earlier, on November 7, 1966, Allison watched another crowd of over 500 Harvard students greet a Secretary of Defense. But that time, the controversy had been a bit more intense.

The problem: How do you get Robert Strange McNamara away from Quincy House when 700 students are outside waiting to block his path? Nothing like this had ever happened before at Harvard. Sure, there had been minor stuff, a little picketing, a little heckling, but never this many students willing, despite warnings from the administration, to go ahead with a "disruptive demonstration" and to seek a "physical confrontation." The Students for a Democratic Society [SDS], frustrated with the Defense Secretary, was determined to personally show him what they thought of "McNamara's War."

If its tactics were not, SDS's goal was clear: embarrass McNamara. K-School Institute of Politics officials felt equally strongly--they did not want to see their first-ever "honorary associate" swept away by a sea of anti-war students right in front of the television cameras.

So, how do you get Robert Strange McNamara away from Quincy House?

SDS had posted walkie-talkie equipped guards at each exit, but Institute officials believed they had a way to exploit SDS's vigilance. By using a decoy, they could divert the crowd's attention to a side gate, then whisk McNamara away before anyone knew what was going on. Voila. Worth a try, at any rate.

So Institute officials put their plan in action at the Master's garage on DeWolfe Street and Memorial Drive. About a hundred SDS protesters waited outside--word had circulated that McNamara might try to sneak out through here--with some pro-McNamara counter-demonstrators. Sure enough, the door opened and a car pulled out. In the commotion that followed, some students tried to force an open path, others blocked the way, and hundreds ran over to join the action. It took some time before they realized that the car's occupant was not Robert McNamara, architect of the war, but Graham K. Allison '62, Institute official, doing his job.

BUT it didn't work. A few SDS people, suspecting such a ploy, had stayed behind when the decoy car attempted to pull out. When McNamara was hustled toward the Mill St. gate and a waiting Harvard police station wagon, the students refused to budge. The crowd gathered around, a shouting match ensued, and police hustled McNamara over to Leverett House. He eventually left the scene via the underground tunnel system, surfacing at Kirkland House. The incident left both the Institute and the University shell-shocked. "I'm amazed that students at Harvard College would use tactics like that," commented John U. Munro, dean of the college. The Time magazine headline the next week read: "Aberrations at Harvard." It had taken a while, but the '60s had reached insular Cambridge and the precedent set.

But, with the possible exception of "the April season" of protest, that precedent has been sublimated, if not forgotten. The fringe demos that accompany the appearance of each "imperialist war monger" and "amoral capitalist" are strictly routine, a part of the scenery. That's the way it appeared last Monday night before Brown's speech--the standard crowd of 20 protesters from the Spartacus Youth League and the RCP shouting slogans or engaged in heated debate with self-appointed defenders of the free world, etc., and the curious watching and listening. That much was expected--"I'm here to keep an eye on the activities outside," Archie C. Epps III, dean of students, said with a tolerant smile. But the demonstrators were supposed to stay outside.

Secret Service agents displayed their traditional cool in a potentially explosive situation. They let the two RCP protesters harangue the man who served as Secretary of the Air Force at the height of the Vietnam war. At the same time, the agents inconspicuously slid into position in case one of the verbal assailants pulled a gun. A moment before, Brown had been extolling the virtues of arms control.

He had finished reciting four of his six listed reasons why SALT II was a "significant step" towards controlling the arms race when Thomas F. Kelly of Dorchester stood up and began shouting. "I'm a Vietnam vet and I don't have to take this shit anymore..." Brown stepped down from the podium, his face showing no emotion. The crowd of 700 sat in stunned silence while the tirade--a rambling and profane attack on American military policy--continued for about two minutes.

Then Allison took a microphone beside the stage. His voice fraught with barely restrained anger, Allison warned the man: "If you don't shut up right now, Secretary Brown will leave." As if on cue, the audience greeted Allison's remarks with thunderous applause. The students spoke with one clear voice: they wanted to hear the Secretary of Defense, not Red rabble-rousers from Dorchester.

As the clapping drowned out the hoarse shouts of protest, Allison made his way to the second tier and helped a security guard remove the demonstrator and his cohort from the building.

HAROLD BROWN did not say anything of importance in his speech last Monday night, nor did anyone expect him to. His SALT talk resembled more than anything else a hastily prepared--and poorly edited--press release. When high government officials visit Harvard, they huddle with "the experts," the upper echelon of Harvard that masquerades as a government consulting firm. (Or is it the other way around?) For appearance's sake, they crank out a perfunctory speech for "the University community." Yet 700 students show up to hear it. It's The Harvard Experience, students playing their role, with Brown going through the motions. But when Brown left and people filed out, no one was talking about SALT II; the disruption, though trivial, dominated conversation. And it disturbed Allison, who remembered when the students who sat quietly last Monday would have been shouting along with the two interlopers, when the charade fell apart just alittle.