THE COUNCIL SPEAKS

With clarity and force the Student Council has raised its voice against the effects of the Administration's present tenure policy. In its statement Tuesday night, the Council decried the inflexibility inherent in the present "up-or-out" hiring and firing rule. And it expressed the fear in the hearts of many teachers and more undergraduates when it noted that "standards of undergraduate teaching are seriously threatened."

The Council has suggested two alternatives to the Administration's present course: the setting up of a "President's Fund" to take care of pressing short-run departmental needs; and the appointment of associate professors even without the mathematical certainty that they will be promoted to full professorships. These proposals are neither impractical nor startling. Both were implied in the Committee of Eight's Report, and the "frozen" associate professorships have been urged by the Crimson, the Progressive and the high-sounding "Committee to Save Harvard Education." Skirting the broad issue of dictatorship (however benevolent) versus democracy in Harvard's administration, the Council has wisely focussed its attention on the two means best calculated to resuscitate those departments which were tossed over-board last June.

One of these departments, where middle-group teaching is being pared to the bone, is Government. Professor Holcombe has suggested that the remedy lies in handing the department two new permanent appointments, presumably full professorships. This would mean diverting funds from other departments -- robbing Peter to pay Holcombe. Regardless of the long-run merits of such a plan, it is unnecessary. The Government Department can solve its problems for the present and still live within its current income if it is permitted to appoint "frozen" associate professors.

If the Administration decides to appoint more associate professors where they are most badly needed, it must nor rule out the ten men who were given their walking-papers last June. Some have already taken positions elsewhere; some may still prove unworthy of a life-long job on the Faculty. But some of them may yet be restored, and with them a measure of inspiration and competence that Harvard must not lose.