THE FORGOTTEN TEN

The roar of last fall's tenure controversy has subsided to a whisper. "Frozen associate professorships" are no longer a good topic for dinner table conversation in intellectual circles, and there hasn't been a communique from the Committee to Save Harvard Education since the middle of January. But the angry fight precipitated by the "case of the ten assistant professors" is not wholly dead, and the disturbing questions which it raised about the value of Harvard's system of top-side academic government have not been answered.

Last spring the news that ten assistant professors had been fired in the course of applying the Committee of Eight's new tenure system precipitated instantaneous student and Faculty protest. The Administration was charged with ruthless undermining of the English, Government, and Biology Departments. This fall the Student Council and Phi Beta Kappa added their voices to the mounting roar of protest, and the Faculty opposition led by the Teachers' Union and a powerful block of conservative rebels belabored the Administration for what they believed to be a blind and mistaken policy of retrenchment. By December, however, the crisis was over.

When the smoke cleared, the opposition had apparently gained a victory of questionable importance: the Administration had agreed to allow "clearly understaffed" Departments to recommend men for promotion to "frozen" associate professorships. This meant that if the President kept good faith, and the Departments pushed their claims, some of the ten assistant professors could be promoted to permanency even though they might never rise higher than the level of associate professor. Now the grapevine has it that two of the forgotten ten, one in. English and one in Government, have been recommended for promotion to permanent tenure. And confirmation by the Corporation and Board of Overseers seems a sure bet. This is fine. But in the fog of secrecy which shrouds academic politics, it is not clear whether these men are fair test cases, for it seems they are not to be frozen associate professors, but are being promoted via some other budgetary loop-hole.

What the Departments which were dismembered when the axe fell last June must do, is to test the Administration's good faith by recommending for promotion to frozen associate professorships enough of the forgotten ten to restore their departments to academic competency. A paper victory is no victory at all. But even if all the fired assistants were taken back on permanent tenure, deep and troublesome doubts would remain. Should a self-perpetuating body of businessmen and lawyers have life and death power over Harvard? Is an autocracy, however benevolent, the best way of running a college which is a national institution in a democracy? Hiring back the forgotten ten would not remove these doubts, but it would be a token that change for the betttr is not impossible in the government of Harvard.