The Administration: III

When the President of Harvard makes a decision contrary to strongly-held views of faculty, alumni, or students it may be either an act of calculated initiative or one of uncalculated (perhaps miscalculated) foolishness. Mr. Lowell's decision to initiate the House system irked many wealthy and influential alumni, and their student counterparts; Mr. Eliot's establishment of the Graduate School angered many professors: both decisions contributed mightily to the vitality of Harvard education. Those of Mr. Pusey's decisions which aroused substantial opposition, however, rarely blazed new trails. Posterity will contemplate them with amazement at his error, not admiration for his daring.

In 1958, for example, a feature article in the CRIMSON precipitated public questioning of a University policy against non-Christian services in Memorial Church--a policy which barred the use of the chapel for Jewish marriage ceremonies. Mr. Pusey responded not by reexamining a policy over-ripe for such a review, but by dogmatically reasserting, on grounds of tradition, its continued validity. Further, Mr. Pusey stated his views in a tone which he should have realized would be found offensive by Jews and Christians alike. It is nothing short of astonishing that a Harvard President could write words which justifiably provoked a responsible member of his Faculty to say he "had always thought that Harvard stood for a more liberal, more Christian, and a less pompous approach to such matters."

But, most important, after the original tempest, Mr. Pusey continued blithely on a collision course: butting stubbornly against faculty and student opposition. Harvard is an oligarchy in theory, ruled by a self-perpetuating group of seven men, but in practice it can only function as a peculiar sort of democracy, in which the President acts either with the assent of those concerned, or with the carefully considered and deeply held belief that he is moving with the wave of the future. In 1958, Mr. Pusey, so deeply rooted in the past that he found it difficult to move even into the present, was so far from acting with the assent of his Faculty that he faced a group of distinguished professors--a veritable executive committee of the Faculty--petitioning the President to reverse the policy to which he was committed. The situation was not unprecedented (Mr. Conant had found himself under similar assault on the question of appointments), but it was distinctly unfortunate.

It was all the more unfortunate because it proved to be the first in a series of misguided presidential actions. Repeatedly, Mr. Pusey had taken positions from which the rest of the University dissented sharply. Last spring, after his attempt to prevent a Pete Seeger concert on invisible legal grounds, the President said it had never occurred to him that anyone could think a question of academic freedom was involved. It is difficult to see what else anyone could have thought. More recently, in the timing of the room-rent raise and the decision to require Paul Tillich to give exams in two of his courses, Mr. Pusey has again shown himself unable to estimate the probable reactions to his decisions.

Wrong decisions can be reversed: the lasting consequence of Mr. Pusey's errors is a growing feeling among the Faculty that the President does not understand his University. Scholars do not like to work where they are not understood. The Faculty's suspicion that Mr. Pusey's Harvard is not their Harvard is dangerous; it is also disastrously close to true.