Speaking freely in academe?

When students heckled Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Weinberger '38 at his Sanders Theatre appearance last fall, it touched a rather raw philosophical nerve within the University. The University felt some compunction to respect students' right to express their disapproval, but, given their more pressing concern for the free speech of scheduled speakers--in this case Weinberger--officials also felt no qualms threatening to discipline two of the hecklers. With some of her older children, however, Mother Harvard faces a still trickier problem; how should the University defend, suppress or ignore the political words or actions of its faculty?

The heightened political involvement of the faculty dating from the New Deal era set the stage for potential conflicts, but the first serious test case came in the 1950s with the rise of McCarthyism. Then, Harvard was forced to defend political actions on the part of some of its faculty lest its silence tacitly betray them. Time and some thoughtful action resolved the immediate crisis during that Cold War era, but the issue of University tolerance of faculty activism remains both relevant and divisive.

No consensus appraisal of the University's actions during the traumatic McCarthy years has yet emerged. Was the University a shining example of devotion to free speech, willing to protect and even nurture professors and students who admitted they had been communists? Or did Harvard, while erecting a facade of virtue through token acts and meaningless public statements, quietly pursue a private policy of caution and cooperation with the witch-hunters?

The debate is particularly bitter and controversial, especially among those whose careers were affected directly. But both sides would agree that universities across the nation tended to take their cues from Harvard's example.

"Harvard was a beacon to other universities," said David Riesman '31. Ford Professor of Social Sciences Emeritus, in an interview last week. "There may have been some smudges on the escutcheon, but it was a handsome escutcheon nonetheless."

Riesman, who did not arrive at Harvard until 1958, more than five years after the worst of the McCarthy period, has done landmark studies of education and the educational atmosphere at Harvard. He pointed out that McCarthy trained his guns on Harvard with a vengeance second only to those he reserved for "the establishment" stretching along the Potomac River. In 1953, McCarthy would bring his hearing committee proceedings to Boston to challenge Harvard professors, and later in the year he accused then-President Nathan M. Pusey '28 of producing a "Red-Mess" in Cambridge.

"Speaking as someone who was not in Cambridge during that period, but who looked to Harvard as a leader in the world of the academy. I think we all took heart in Harvard's actions," said Riesman. Harvard's public image and its handling of the most celebrated cases did set the University apart from other colleges in the nation. Despite President James B. Conant's '14 signature on a 1949 National Education Association report which stated that Communist Party members "should not be employed as teachers." Harvard did take a comparatively firm stand against McCarthy; first, by selecting Pusey to succeed Conant; and second, by refusing to fire professors who either admitted that they had been Communists or pleaded the Fifth Amendment when brought before investigatory committees.

Pusey was president of Lawrence College in Wisconsin when he was chosen to replace Conant, Wisconsin was McCarthy's home state and Pusey had gained notoriety for openly opposing McCarthy's virulent crusade, and working against his reelection to the Senate. For many of Pusey's appointments symbolized a defiant Harvard response.

But when Pusey became president in June of 1953, he inherited the cases of Wendell H. Furry, Leon J. Kamin and Helen Deane Markham. In February Furry, then an associate professor of Physics, had been called before Congressman Harold H. Velde's House Un-American Affairs Committee and had refused to answer any questions. Kamin, a teaching fellow in Social Relations and Markham, assistant professor of Anatomy, had also invoked the Fifth Amendment in March before the Senate Internal Security Subcommittee of the Judiciary Committee. The Harvard Corporation was faced with a dilemma: what should be done with these professors who refused to speak, when such an action seemed an implication of guilt."

One month before Pusey assumed office, the Corporation decided the three professors would stay, but Kamin and Markham had been found guilty of "misconduct," because invoking the Fifth did not befit scholars who were, in the Corporation's opinion, devoted the the "pursuit of truth" and free inquiry. Furry, however, who had testified in a second hearing that he had ceased being a communist in 1951 and had admitted to Harvard officials that in 1944 he had lied to FBI officials about a colleague's political affiliations, was found guilty of "grave misconduct"--grounds for dismissal.

But the University kept Furry on, placing him on probation for three years. Furry passed the three years without incident, became a full professor of Physics in 1962, and retired in 1977. Kamin and Markham finished the terms of their unrenewable contracts with Harvard and left. It was Pusey's public statements and handling of these three cases, far more judicious and civil than the actions of many other universities, that set the tenor of Harvard's reputation in the period.

But recent research has produced revelations, still controversial, that point to the conclusion that there were other, less publicized cases, and another, less sparkling Harvard policy.

"Harvard was anxious to be a symbol of academic freedom to other universities. A secret record of cooperation with the FBI makes the symbol hollow," said Sigmond Diamond, a professor of history and sociology at Columbia University who has been embroiled in a debate about Harvard's actions during the McCarthy period since he began writing about it in 1977. Diamond has a significant personal interest: he received his Ph.D. here in 1953 and a year later was offered the position of Dean of Special Students by then-Dean of the Faculty McGeorge Bundy.

Diamond claims that Bundy and Pusey, both familiar with Diamond's membership in the Communist party until soon after World War II, challenged him about whether he would speak with "civic authorities" about his involvement. Diamond says he followed the advice of colleagues and explained that he would speak about his own involvement, but not about that of others. This wasn't good enough for Bundy and Puzey, Diamond claims, and he didn't get the job.

Bundy has disputed Diamond on a number of points but it is clear now that Harvard did take quiet action against a number of people with past Communist activities, refusing to hire administrators and in one case an instructor. Bundy has said that the administrators were refused positions because academic freedom issues were not involved and that Harvard had to be particularly careful during the years of the McCarthy attack. In the case of the man up for an instructorship. Bundy has said that the decision was made by the Corporation and that he "disagreed." Pusey has been more quiet about the issue, standing firmly behind Harvard's actions. In an interview last week Pusey said he "vaguely" knew of Diamond's case and did not want to comment. "I don't think there is anything we did that I would change if had it all to do over again," he added.

Still, these "smudges on the escutcheon" only serve to throw the more honorable University actions into ironic relief, for Harvard's actions can probably be judged better than those of many other American universities. Many other schools fired professors who invited the Fifth Amendment. Harvard expressed its disdain but in most cases allowed the professors to stay on. Until more information emerges, the best measure of Harvard's actions may be a study which Riesman conducted in 1955. "I found that what really mattered was the atmosphere among the scholars. People at Harvard at least felt free to do whatever research they wanted."

But in the '60s, Riesman noted, that atmosphere disintegrated. After the period of calm that swept the country in the late '50s and early '60s, the Vietnam War, the rise of the counterculture and radical student activism splintered campuses around the country into angry factions.

At Harvard, as at many other schools, the administration seemed to lose its way. Early in the decade Pusey had made statements lauding what he saw as a new burst of student activism, but he could hardly have expected the upheavals that the next few years would bring. Where Harvard's public reputation during the '50s as a foe of McCarthy produced a feeling of collective purpose, in the '60s groups within the University turned on each other. In the opinion of many, demagogery had proved to have a home on the left as well as the right. Pusey was perplexed. "I just didn't understand what was going on. I was upset that people within the University would think that it was a wicked sinful place," he said last week.

To those who were politically more moderate and conservative, the administration's failure to censure the students who harassed professors, and also its overreaction to the biggest student action--the strike of spring '69--revealed a leadership that had lost its bearing.

"In many of those situations in which professors were harassed, the administration acted in a cowardly way. In effect and sometimes in word the administration said 'they have a right to harass.' That was ludicrous," said Ford Professor of Social Sciences Daniel Bell.

Not surprisingly, this administrative lack of purpose extended to the faculty as well. Harvard had the largest Students for a Democratic Society chapter in the country, and it counted a number of prominent professors as members. "The administration was in a dilemma," said Riesman, himself a strong critic of the war and active in the peace movement, but a moderate in the sense that he rejected the revolutionary calls of the new left and the turn-on, tune-in, drop-out ideology of the counterculture. "What was the administration to do with professors who incited violence? What to do with [Higgins Professor of Biology Emeritus] George Wald out there orating in the Yard?"

Given the confluence of events and personalities, the answer was a resounding nothing. Pusey, a religious man with a passion for civility and reason, seemed particularly ill-suited to handle or even comprehend the conflict. After the bust in April 1969 the Faculty, divided into factions, began to assert its power. As Clarence Dillon Professor of International Affairs Samuel P. Huntington said at the time. "After the bust, there was basically no legitimate authority in the University." Authority had lost all claims to respect, and the ascendancy of President Derek C. Bok in 1971 did not offer much promise--Bok was known as a cautious player of interests, and he was sure to build his power slowly and carefully.

In addition to faculty activism on the left, a number of faculty members in this period who were identified with the government or espoused ideas construed as conservative, faced student harassment. Heckling crowds disrupted the classes of, and sometimes followed around the campus, George D. Markham Professor of Government Edward C. Banfield, who had criticized Great Society welfare programs in the ghettoes; Huntington, who had advised the government on Vietnam; and particularly Edgar Pierce Professor of Psychology Richard J. Herrnstein, Herrnstein had written that genetic factors contributed to intelligence more than environment, and although he never mentioned race in his articles, he was branded a racist by campus groups.

The administration dodged involvement in this conflict until early 1972 when Bok followed the Faculty Council's lead in condemning the student harassment.

But only two months later James Q. Wilson, Henry Lee Shattuck Professor of Government, wrote in Commentary that Harvard's position as a university where "free and uninhibited discussion' was possible" was slipping. "The list of subjects that cannot be publicly discussed [at Harvard] in a free and open forum has grown steadily," he wrote.

While no one compares the present troubles to those of the McCarthy years, heckling continues to be a contentious issue. It raises the same, complex issues that have been raised throughout Harvard's recent history--and the University doesn't seem to have found a satisfying answer yet