On the Right

"We thought we lived in an enchanted world of great men. We found that when they [the rest of the Faculty] gave in to student demands they were in many ways worse than the national average in terms of civil courage,"--Richard E. Pipes, Baird Professor of History, a hardliner during the Harvard strike of 1969.

For conservative senior members of the Faculty--those who believed in Harvard as a "fortress of principle," as Pipes puts it--the student occupation of University Hall, the ensuing strike, and the Faculty's reaction to those events all combined to pose a serious threat to the existence of the University as they knew it ten years ago.

A small number of faculty members had come to perceive that threat well before the spring of 1969. During the previous fall, they began to meet weekly to voice worries about the Faculty's growing inability to contend with campus unrest. The meetings were held in secret--usually at a faculty member's house--until the tumultuous events of April forced the group into the open.

The small collection of about 20 like-minded professors came to be known on campus as the "conservative caucus," a term of convenience that separated them from their colleagues who took a generally more pro-student view.

Today, many leading members of the caucus still bristle at the mere mention of the words "Harvard Strike," or even the year 1969. Most refuse to talk about the subject. George B. Kistiakowsky, professor of Chemistry Emeritus and a former caucus leader, went so far as to say he does not remember anything that went on ten years ago: "I plead the Fifth Amendment," he added. John T. Dunlop, Lamont Professor of Economics, who was dean of the Faculty during the early '70s, refused even to listen to questions about the strike.

Even for those who agree to speak about the strike, the subject remains sensitive. The term "conservative," for instance, still irritates some former members of the caucus, who claim they were moderates. "There was no such thing as a 'conservative' caucus except in the eyes of those who wanted to tar their colleagues," asserts Arthur Maass, professor of Government and a participant in the meetings. "The only thing that united them (caucus members) was loyalty to the University, not outside forces.

Others, however, allow that the lines along which professors divided could be legitimately labeled "conservative" and "liberal" in the context of the time. James Q. Wilson, Shattuck Professor of Government, says the emergence of the caucuses--both liberal and conservative--was basically a healthy, even necessary, development. "It made debate more manageable by providing a forum for the essential conduct of Faculty business," he says.

Wilson, a prominent member of the conservative caucus, recalls that the group's aim was not specifically to bolster the University administration. Its objective, he and other participants say, was "to keep the University do-politicized"--an aim that--in view of the political nature of any caucus--even the late Robert G. McClosky, professor of Government and leader of the caucus, admitted was somewhat "paradoxical."

Ernest R. May, professor of History, labels the caucus as "a group of people who had procedural concerns--we got together Faculty members who could decide language of legislation in a group smaller than 500. When legislation was written on the floor of the Faculty meeting, it was ill-considered. We wanted to impose some kind of order."

In April of 1969 the substance of that voting--in one complicated parliamentary form or another--came down to what the Faculty believed was more significant: the students' seizure of University Hall or the police bust. The conservative caucus was split on the bust ("Some of us believe it was unwise. Some of us believe it was unavoidable though regrettable," one of their resolutions read), but all its members agreed that the overriding issue was the SDS's unwarranted seizure of a University building.

In retrospect, members of the caucus still stand by their judgment in the period. "I still think that the seizure was the decisive issue," Wilson says. "It became the dominant radical tactic of the time."

May agrees, but condemns the subsequent bust as well. "The occupation of the building was a decision by a minority and there was a tactical question about the administration response. My business is looking back at decisions and I can readily see it turned out to be the wrong decision." Pipes, however, says then-President Nathan M. Pusey '28 handled the situation "courageously though clumsily," adding that the administration "should have called police before they (SDS) went in."

Few of the so-called "conservatives" disapprove of the existence of an Afro-American Studies Department, but most decry the way it came into being. Recalling the April 22 Loeb Theater Faculty meeting at which the department was authorized under a plan allowing for student participation in major department decisions, Pipes describes "the sickening spectacle of the Faculty rationalizing its fear."

If the events of April 1969 "shattered Harvard's consensus" and "left many wounds," as Pipes says, there is uncertainty over the extent to which those cleavages remain. Within the Faculty, a few professors may bear old grudges--but reaction to the Core Curriculum, for instance, has not broken down along the old "liberal" and "conservative" lines. Wilson notes that he is working closely with old antagonists from 1969, such as Government Professors Michael L. Walzer and Stanley Hoffmann.

The most devastating long-term effects of the strike events, says Wilson, was "the legitimization of mass protest techniques which were used repeatedly in ways that inhibited academic freedom. Controversial subjects were not discussed because of fear of the reaction; outside speakers with unpopular views could not appear." Wilson says it took five to seven years before this fear dissipated.

Another long-range effect of the strike, according to many faculty members, was the time it took away from scholarship. "Attention was so diverted to all of those committees and commissions that many professors couldn't produce much on their own," says Maass, who claims that campus unrest affected productive scholarship for five years or more. "Some Faculty members got very sidetracked--they spent a lot of time on issues they didn't known much about," May says.

If Pipes's "enchanted world" dissolved in the heat of the strike and its aftermath, those faculty members who sought such a world did not disappear with it. Some former members of the caucus have retired; others have died. But ten years later, the majority continue to teach, no longer members of a faction, but unchanged in their assessment of the legacy of 1969. Lost scholarship, student-faculty distrust, enmities within the Faculty--the conservatives regard these as the long-term ill effects. The long-term lesson, as May puts it, is the realization that "nearly all issues can be discussed in a rational way."