DEMOCRATIC MANIFESTO

Whatever it may be in the theories of the President and his Fellows, Harvard is in fact an oligarchy. By the common practice at the nation's oldest university, matters of policy are settled at the top, and any voice which is suffered from the nether reaches of the faculty or the administration is in practice limited to an advisory function. This is true in the central governing body of the University; it is true within each separate department. It holds in general for most decisions on policy; it holds in particular for decisions on appointment and tenure.

In the light of this, the report issued yesterday by the Cambridge Teachers' Union is a manifesto for educational democracy. In its very essence it is a plea for democratization of the procedures of appointment and tenure. This plea takes practical form in proposals that all members of each department, from instructors to full professors, form a voting body, that they elect their own chairman, that they select by vote a democratic committee on appointments which shall make all recommendations.

A benevolent aristocracy may be the ideal form of government, provided the Olympian Elect can be found to direct it. But undoubtedly a situation where the older, more settled members of any department have a deciding voice in advancement and tenure provides a huge hole through which abuses may pour in. There is a possibility that the conscious or unconscious prejudices of the older members will determine their decisions, or that points of view not in agreement with theirs will be excluded so that the department becomes narrow and biased. The current Feild controversy is a case in point. There is also a danger that the older men will hunt for academic lions to make the top of the department more imposing, while ignoring the greater needs down below. There is the further possibility that the central governing body of the University will impose its choices--arrived at variously--upon the supposedly autonomous departments.

Hence, in practice, a democratic set-up promises the greater good. Such a system in each department, operating through the proposed fact-finding committees, forestalls to a great extent personal bias and prejudice. It provides a much fairer and more competent method of ascertaining the abilities of each candidate, both in research and teaching. By its very nature, it makes for strength to throw off the yoke of the Corporation. The reaction of the official faculty committee now investigating tenure to this document of educational democracy should be of the utmost interest.