Harvard in the Eighties ...350 and Counting

Henry Rosovsky, former dean of the Faculty, Corporation member and architect of the Core Curriculum, said it best.

"You will be here for four years. I will be here for the rest of my life. Harvard will be here forever," he reportedly told a group of student protesters sometime in the 1980s.

He was probably right.

The Harvard of the 1980s, as Rosovsky so aptly described it, was an institution that placed a premium on its own existence. And as the '80s fade into the '90s, the changes in this world view are not readily apparent.

The University entered the decade as the wealthiest and arguably most prestigious research institution in the country. And it leaves the decade as the wealthiest and arguably most prestigious research institution in the country.

President Derek C. Bok still runs things from his Mass. Hall vantage point, and first-year students still live in the Yard. The much-vaunted house system and Core Curriculum are still in place, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences still has but a handful of women and minority professors.

In fact, the litany of stasis is a long one.

No divestment from South Africa. No changes in Harvard's often-criticized governance system. Few, if any, differences in undergraduate education.

The '80s were a time of retrenchment for the University, as many a frustrated student activist has noted. The big changes--the "non-merger merger" with Radcliffe, the creation of the Core Curriculum, the opening of the Kennedy School of Government--had all been made by the time 1980 rolled around.

And the big issues--the University's holdings in South Africa, its closed circle of governance, its lack of a diverse faculty--just never disappeared.

It is perhaps fitting that the biggest event of the decade was the ostentatious party Harvard threw for itself on the occasion of its 350th birthday in 1986. Prince Charles and luminaries of all stripes were on hand for the week-long festivities in September, as were angry protesters, who disrupted a black-tie dinner for big donors to call attention to Harvard's investments in South Africa.

With its fireworks and endless symposia, its big-name politicians and celebrity academics, the 350th was Harvard at its best and worst. Quite simply, it was Harvard at its most Harvard.

But if official Harvard celebrated its immortality in the '80s, the Harvard of students, faculty and staff was not without changes. The degree of change was measured in increments, rather than sweeping policy reforms. But it was different, nonetheless.

Three years after Alan M. Brinkley was denied tenure, the History Department tenured a professor from inside its own ranks for the first time in two decades--one. The once-uniformly white male Harvard Corporation named a woman to its ranks--one. Harvard named a woman--one--to the position of a University vice president.

The University's 3400 clerical and technical workers won the right to a union after 17 years of organizing, defeating the Harvard administration's often-intense campaign against them. Harvard severed ties with the nine all-male final clubs when they refused to admit women in 1984. University investments in South Africa have shrunk dramatically, even if Harvard has never made the moral statement of total divestment for which so many student and alumni activists have lobbied.

And despite the inevitable conflicts between town and gown, Harvard's relationship with the city has improved dramatically.

The everyday quality of life in the Yard has a different feel to it, too. Computers and fax machines have woven themselves into the fabric of student life. The Mug 'n Muffin and other Harvard Square hangouts are gone, forced out by yuppification and high rents. The 18-year-old drinking age is a thing of the past; Harvard On-Line Information System (HOLLIS) and bar-coded books have come to the libraries. Student dining halls are equipped with microwave ovens.

But if life for students was different this decade, they had little to do with it.

The litany of student activism in the 1980s is a long one. Divestment from South Africa. CIA recruitment on campus, minority and women faculty hiring. ROTC on campus. Housing randomization.

A few of the issues were resolved. But the majority faded into semi-oblivion.

The Southern African Solidarity Committee, which in 1985 routinely drew hundreds of committed students to its rallies, was this fall able to muster less than 30 for a candlelight vigil on essentially the same issues.

And for other student movements, it has taken even less time to lose momentum. Two years ago, Stop Withholding Access Today (SWAT) was one of the most vocal organizations on campus. In the wake of a complaint filed by Lisa J. Schkolnick '88 to force the Fly Club to open its doors to women, students postered the campus, rallied outside club parties and called on the Undergraduate Council to denounce final club sexism.

Today, SWAT still exists, but organized campus protest against the final clubs is nowhere to be seen. Schkolnick has graduated, her complaint is in bureaucratic limbo, and the final clubs continue to punch every fall.

What Rosovsky recognized is that Harvard does not need to change. Harvard can simply wait. The governing boards do not need to accede to anyone's demands. In four years, the crusading first-year activists of today will have graduated, and their successors will have moved on to fresh territory. The disgruntled associate professors denouncing the inequities of the University's tenure system will have fallen victim to it, and moved on to more prestigious jobs at less prestigious institutions.

In the meantime, Harvard can keep itself perfectly busy just being Harvard.

"To make a great institution continue to be great appealed to me so much that I have little difficulty deciding that I ought to do it," a newly-appointed Dean of the Faculty A. Michael Spence said in 1984, explaining his decision to accept the post.

And as the '80s draw to a close, Harvard's fundamental goal--to remain "great"--has not altered.

As the University haggles over the final details in a planned $2 billion fundraising drive, Bok and other top administrators say they are trying to steer Harvard toward the future. They want to broaden the University's international focus, to strengthen undergraduate education, to maintain Harvard's infrastructure and to bolster the size of the faculty.

These priorities describe a Harvard that is bigger and broader. A Harvard that is stronger. Not, however, a Harvard that is fundamentally different from the Harvard of today.

The truly substantive changes between the Harvard of 1989 and that of 1979 pale in comparison to the previous 10 years, or the 10 before that. The commotion of the past 10 years, the new policy initiatives and the new deans, the recurring waves of student protest seemed important at the time. But in retrospect, the 1980s seem to have made the minutest of marks on the pages of Harvard history.

If the past decade has a lesson, it is that traditions die hard at the nation's oldest institution of higher learning. Even at Harvard, changes are inevitable, but not many and not often.

Harvard is forever.