On the Left

For liberal Faculty members, then as now, the bust was the visceral issue, the action that exploded all traces of deferences and jolted them into action. It radicalized many Faculty members who could not believe Pusey could have taken such an action. Few faculty supported the occupation, which most dismissed as silly or an unforgiveable resort to violence--but the liberals found the bust ultimately more disturbing. Stanley Hoffmann, professor of Government, notes, "The dividing line was on attitudes toward the bust, even if one disagreed with the students--as did Michael Walzer and I, who thought the takeover stupid and silly. But calling the police was silly--it radicalized the rest of the student body--and just plain wrong."

This conviction prompted Hoffmann and Walzer to ask a number of other Faculty members to attend a meeting at Sever Hall to discuss the bust. About 100 faculty attended the meeting, from which emerged the liberal caucus, led by Hoffmann, Walzer and Wassily Leontief, then professor of Economics. They drew up a four-point resolution condemning both the student takeover and Pusey's action; the motion specifically indicated Pusey, saying he had "misinterpreted the Faculty vote on ROTC" and stating that his public statements "were a major source of the current disturbance." The resolution also "deplored the lack of consultation" in the decision to call in the police, and asked Faculty to discuss the causes of the eruption and how to prevent such frustration from building up in the future.

The resolution gave the liberals their basic platform, and marked the Faculty's division into liberal and conservative camps. Although the bust precipitated the split, the caucuses focused on distinct differences in principle and tactics, Hoffmann says. "The conservatives seemed to us to be saying we have to defend authority even if authority was stupid. One conservative insisted on supporting Pusey even though he said to me, 'Pusey is like Louis XVI, except that Louis listened to his advisers.' But the liberals argued nothing good would come of unqualified support. When the president and administration make mistakes there is no reason to support them," Hoffmann says.

The first overt politicking centered around the emergency Faculty meeting called for April 11, the day after the bust. Both caucuses had drawn up resolutions: the conservatives condemned the students while the liberals condemned the administration, and called for a committee to investigate the underlying causes of the occupation. At this first meeting, the liberals won a substantive victory through a compromise, which combined the conservative preamble with the substantive suggestions of the liberals--a new elective committee that "withdrew Faculty power from the president," James C. Thomson, then a junior faculty member and tutor at Leverett House, says.

The Faculty caucuses filled this vacuum of power, by preparing drafts of legislation and working cut compromises before formal Faculty meetings. This uneasy alliance--and heated politicking--enabled the Faculty, in a series of extraordinary meetings, to pass controversial and innovative proposals almost unanimously.

Liberal faculty are almost unanimous in placing a large share of the blame on Pusey for bad communication, and for polarizing faculty and students. "The whole thing was avoidable--it took the inflexibility of Pusey and Harvard's built-in arrogance. Pusey was like Dean Rusk--he felt that God was on his side," Thomson notes.

The caucuses first compromised on the resolution that set up the Committee of 15, the disciplinary body established after the strike. The liberals won their goal of placing voting student members on the committee, in return for approving the conservatives plan for electing committee members by majority vote instead of proportional representation. The caucuses also agreed on the final shape of the Afro-American Studies Department and the structure of the Faculty Council. These divisive issues, which months of Faculty meetings had been unable to resolve earlier in the year, were decided with surprisingly large margins because of compromises and preliminary politicking by both groups.

In time the caucuses broke up from a lack of issues to discuss. "The caucuses faded when the only issue that seemed to remain was who was on each caucus," Walzer notes. Ten years later, both sides assert that current Faculty alignments do not reflect the old caucus divisions. But attitudinal differences still persist, and liberals and conservatives divide on the deep-seated causes and results of the strike. Liberals consistently emphasize the antiquated administrative and decision-making structure of the University, and believe the strike exposed these inadequacies. "It helped change a very archaic governance at Harvard--the place had a totally outmoded communication network from the top to the lowly, and it helped to re-establish communication network from the top to the lowly, and it helped to re-establish communication on all levels," Thomson, now curator of the Nieman Foundation, notes.

For liberals as well as conservatives, the events of April exposed a disturbing irrationality. But where liberals differ from conservatives is their conviction that the Faculty and administration behaved as badly as the students. "What was most striking was the ease with which academics, who are supposed to be rational, lose perspective. They behaved like people--no better perspective or relativity than anybody else," Hoffmann says. And he adds that some of this instinctive fear, a gut-level memory of 1969, persists in Faculty attitudes toward student activism. "If the South Africa issue mushroomed--though I don't think it would be the same because Bok is not Pusey--there would be a Pavlovian reaction," he notes.

Walzer says the liberals "didn't think the institution was collapsing or the age of barbarians had begun. It still seemed to us possible to talk to anyone, even with the student radicals with whom we disagreed," he adds. This belief in communication the liberals say is one legacy of the strike. Hoffmann notes, "There are better relationships between administration, faculty and students--more openness, more sense of community." Of student complaints that their input into decision-making is at best token, the liberals say that students, after all, had no input at all ten years ago. "There is a tendency on students' part to say, 'we are not being consulted,' when they are really saying, 'they are not doing what we want,'" Hoffmann notes.

Still, many faculty also blame the limited student influence on decision-making on a decline in students' political interests, and on the unavoidable realities of running a university such as Harvard. "It seemed to happen overnight. I woke up one morning and there were fewer political organizations," Walzer says. And, as Thomson ruefully summarizes the lasting gains and eroding gains of the strike: "If it hadn't happened there wouldn't have been as much student input as you get these days. But the problem was that students were transients, and ultimately the power lies with those who are here forever."