Examining Pomp and Policy

Amidst the proud festivities at Harvard's 350th anniversary celebration last fall a group of graduate students, prompted by what they considered excessively pompous accolades, began to raise questions and doubts about the reality of the University's commitment to justice and academic freedom.

As a result of that examination, the group--a nearly three year old collective of graduate students known as Students for Empowerment that examines issues of justice in the University--will publish a book next fall called "How Harvard Rules."

The work is a series of essays that express the radical view of a faction of faculty and students toward what they feel is an authoritarian University government structure, says Jack Trumpbour, a teaching fellow in the History Department and a contributor and editor of the book.

"Harvard is an archaic institution that came out in the days of monarchical and colonial America--it has a pseudo-feudal style that is not at all representative of democratization," he explains.

"Students are told that you are at Harvard, you're told that you're great, and you trade prestige for you're rights," he says. "People can become very complacent here."

The book will have contributions from members of the Harvard faculty, including Professor of Geology Stephen Jay Gould, Professor of Microbiology and Molecular Genetics Jonathan R. Beckwith, and Professor of Biology Ruth Hubbard, as well as works by several undergraduates and some outside contributors, but most of the articles have been written by the members of Students for Empowerment.

The book's title, indicative of the critical view of the writers toward parts of Harvard's administration, recalls the student occupation of University Hall in 1969. When students occupied that building to protest the University's expansion and its ties to the Reserve Officer Training Corp, they procured documents that exposed University activities and published them under the same title.

The essays in the newest "How Harvard Rules" focus on what Trumpbour calls a frustrating breach between rehetoric and reality within the University.

For example Trumpbour says that during the 350th celebration there were many speeches praising Harvard's dedication to liberty and free speech over the centuries, and one speaker stressed Harvard's role in fighting the McCarthyism in the 1950s.

"But in reality, Harvard had a shameful record--if you were a conservative or even a liberal who was accussed, Harvard would help you, but if you really were a socialist, Harvard would just throw you into [McCarthy's] hands," Trumpbour says.

And things have not changed much since then, the history graduate student says. President Bok is a popular president but his progressive rehetoric rarely translates into concrete action, Trumpbour says, adding that the framework of the government of the University prevents most changes.

"McCarthy and Nixon called Harvard the 'Kremlin on the Charles,' they viewed the university as very radical, but it really is conservative on many fronts," Trumpbour says.

The essays will examine all aspects of the Harvard administrations activities within the University and on the national and international level. It addresses the Harvard Corporation and community relations--such as Harvard's role as the largest landowner in Cambridge and its problems with labor unions. It also examines Harvard's role in the nation's foreign policy--specifically the arms control movement, which Trumpbour criticizes.

"They [Harvard] perpetuate the status quo in arms control--they are liberals who are actually reactionaries," he says.

Trumpbour says that the book will also expose sexism in the sciences, an ideological agenda that needs to be addressed because for many years Harvard has tried to give scientific credibility to ideas of superiority and inferiority between the races and sexes.

Cult of Expertise

The book also attacks Harvard's tenure process, which Trumpbour says is "remarkably closed off to other groups" in the decision making process.

"The book is a critique against the cult of expertise [in the administration] that tells people you can't get involved because these people know more than you do," he says. "But there is no lord-serf mentality, students can get involved."

Trumpbour says that the university would prefer for everybody to be passive and complacent, and he says that the thought that universities in general do breed the "assembly line" mentality that urges students to "punch into class and not challenge things." The goal of the essays is to provide students and other interested people a critical analysis into the University, and to spark activism and raise questions about policy.

Already one of the essays by Eugene Rivers '83 has sparked a minor controversy. Evans' article charges that the University never gave Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III a fair opportunity to be promoted to Dean of the College. Instead of Epps, who is Black, the University promoted former Dean of Admissions L. Fred Jewett '57 to the post.

A Black undergraduate group asked Bok to look into the charges. He refused, suggesting instead that the group speak to the administrators directly involved in the decision.

While Trumpbour says that he thinks the book will receive much enthusiasm and support from students and the community, he predicts that the University will try to denounce it.

"They will develop the typical forms of dismissal that they always do, calling a work 'unrigorous' or 'unscholarly' or saying that 'its goals are utopian', but the community will not ignore the significance of the work," he says.