Harvard Imitates Iran-Contra Fiascc

Watching Lt. Col. North testify in Congress this week, one is struck by the extent to which our foreign policy has been conducted without the consent or knowledge of the American people for the past few years. But the shock turns to dismay when one realize that Harvard runs itself in much the same way. Administrators run the school and students watch, not knowing what they do and, in many cases, not caring anyway.

"You will be here for four years, I will be here until I die, and Harvard will be here forever," Geyser University Professor and former dean of the faculty Henry Rosovsky once told a group of undergraduates. It is this attitude that drives the Corporation, the seven-man all-white governing board which technically owns all of Harvard, to exclude students from any major decisions affecting the University.

Harvard administrators believe that students cannot act with proper perspective or responsibility due to their fleeting presence (in comparison to the immortality of this 351-year-old institution). Or maybe they just don't like undergraduates; sometimes it's hard to tell. Therefore, student input is ignored on decisions on investment policy, treatment of unions, handling student protests, future expansion, research policy, and so on. In fact, the Administration fails to constantly inform students what issues it takes up and what it decides.

Unfortunately, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and the College follow this precedent and turn a deaf ear to student input in important matters. At Harvard junior faculty are granted tenure based on the recommendations first of their colleagues ad then of a board of outside experts before going to Bok and the Corporation for approval. Students have no real voice in this process, nor do they have a precise idea of how it works. Professors evidently believe that students do not have the capability to accurately judge scholarly merits and would be susceptible to turning the tenure review process into a popularity contest.

But the belief that students should be entirely locked out of the decision making process because of their inability to evaluate individual cases is reminiscent of North's belief that it was fine to hide covert foreign policy maneuvers even from Congress. But unlike Harvard professors deciding tenure, even North has to report to somebody--namely the Congress.

Not only do undergraduates lack influence in the selection of their teachers, they also lack any power in disciplining their peers. The 25-man Administrative Board, which will decide the majority of disciplinary cases each year, doesn't even have one student member, in contrast to many other schools where undergraduates often play important roles in such decisions. Although students will be chosen by lot to serve on the new Judicial Board, it is likely that the Board will not examine many cases, and when it does, will use students to legitimize to politically-explosive decisions.

Of course, Harvard's student body does have on organized deliberative and representative body which could serve to be a conduit between undergraduates and the faculty and administration, a potential check, if you will. But Harvard's version of student government, the Undergraduate Council, plays no important role in University decisionmaking. Its statements on policy are largely ignored and its members are not included in any meaningful decisions. And because the University does not entrust the undergraduate government with any responsibility other than deciding how much money to spend on its own furniture, students do not take seriously their own representatives. In the face of disregard on one side and apathy on the other, the Council has become an unwieldy, bureaucratized morass filled with publicity hounds in search of filler for their resumes.

However much the Undergraduate Council mocks the meanings of the words, students government, its failure to truly represent its constituency should not prevent students from participating in Harvard government. If the University is to be true to the democratic values it defends in Washington and in society, then students must be granted a voice in Harvard's decisions. As an important segment of the University community, students ought to have some means of influencing important decisions other than blocking 350th anniversary dinners.

Administrators would reply, "How would you have us listen to students? They can't approve every stock transaction we make." One thing the Iran-contra scandal seems to reveal is the fact that Congress cannot meddle in the minutiae of foreign policy. However, Congress most definitely has a role in setting larger policy boundaries. In much the same way, students could not and should not attempt to involve themselves in the day-to-day management of the University. But they can help formulate the larger goals of tenure, investment, and other policies which they now have no influence over, perhaps by providing students with a seat on the University's Corporation. If the traditional power centers would still have overwhelming control, at least students would automatically have a voice in a high place.

One hopes that the University administration will draw such lessons and learn something more from the Iran-contra hearings than crafty measures for deceiving its constituency.