Reply to Bok

To the Editors of The Crimson:

Recently President Bok responded to requests from elements in the Harvard community for examination of the ethical practices of companies with which the University does business. Bok warned-that Harvard's academic and financial independence would be threatened if it took political stands on issues that do not directly involve it, if it insists on "the right to use economic leverage to influence the activities of others."

"Universities that violate this social compact do so at their peril," he said.

I believe that Bok's position is both unrealistic and unwise for three reasons.

First, a "compact" requires more than one party. Persons and corporations in the private sector regularly use their economic leverage to influence the activities of our universities through their decisions--either not to attend or support particular ones, or to support them for specific purposes. Corporate leadership is more sensitive than ever about the support of institutions which, in their judgement, are improperly critical of their ethical practices or "capitalistic," free enterprise premises.

Public agencies, federal, state and local--upon which Harvard extensively relies for both economic and academic purposes--regularly use their economic leverage pursuant to law to enforce political, economic and ethical policies. Affirmative action, tax and student financial aid laws, the conditions imposed upon the grant of research funds, and in the case of public institutions, their basic operating budgets, are among the more obvious examples.

The "compact" to which Bok refers in fact does not-exist. This reality may circumscribe a university's independence, but that fact underscores the importance of negotiating the reality honesty. A university guided by the myth of a "compact" really places its independence in peril.

Second, when does an institution's (or a person's) decision to use its wealth and influence one way or another "not directly involve it" in the consequences of its own decisions? South Africa may be the most notorious issue of the day on Harvard's campus, but there are many others. Several great urban universities, for example, are extensive slumlords or conduct for profit enterprises which have little directly to do with academic freedom. To argue that the profit purpose, pure and simple, excuses the decision-makers in a non-profit corporation from anticipating the ethical consequences of their decisions, is, it seems to me, to hold universities to a lower standard of ethics than corporate America, in some respects, is now expected to observe.

Automobile, utility, and chemical corporations, for example, are being held responsible for the pollution fallout of their products.

A university's "products" are humans embodying certain attitudes towards knowledge, and an ethical "fall-out" is at the core of the educational process.

This point leads to a third. The widely publicized so-called "reform" of the Core curriculum at Harvard was largely motivated, according to the faculty, by growing concerns about the ethical content of a Harvard College education. It's been asserted that the Harvard stamp should attach only to humans capable of thinking in value-terms and able to make responsible, value-laden decisions, which we all must do every day. A University which, in its operations in the world, fails to struggle with the practice of what it "preaches" in its classrooms, truly exposes its freedom and independence to the greatest jeopardy. For through such a contradiction it subverts the integrity of its curriculum and the authority of those who teach it.

Freedom is a capricious and demanding mistress. The defense of her integrity is an unrelenting vigilance which takes the form of a continuous negotiation of the terms for her life. So it has been since the medieval, monastic beginnings of our modern universities, and so it is now.

The one real lesson emerging out of the administration of universities in the turbulent '60s is that those decisions the executives backed off from and failed to make too often turned out to be the most dangerous and unwise decisions they made. What makes our work so interesting is that we are not above or beyond the fray. Indeed, in so many compelling ways, the modern university is in the eye of its society's hurricane. Dr. William M. Birenbaum   President, Antioch University