The Administration: V

Harvard's efforts to face the implications of Federal aid have illumed not only President Pusey's hesitant approach to the future but also some of the reasons for a widening breach between Faculty and Administration The National Defense Education Act affidavit, the abortive Cheever Report, and two disorganized Faculty meetings devoted to Harvard's relation with the government have revealed inability to anticipate problems, unwillingness to cope directly with difficulties that emerge, desire to avoid rather than exploit the potentials of Federal aid, and, above all, basic failure to deal with Faculty opinion.

When the National Defense Education Act was passed with the disclaimer affidavit attached, the educational community was served with ample notice that it was dangerously our of touch with Congress. If Harvard has reasons for refusing to lobby for satisfactory bills, those reasons are as yet unexpressed. If Harvard's President conceives himself and his university as national leaders, he has offered little of that leadership. The Program for Harvard College offered an important message to the country, but Harvard today only mumbles half-understood fears to itself.

These mumblings are not only inadequate but lamentably unimaginative. The Cheever Report's emphasis upon preserving extant balances within Harvard utterly failed to explain why the status quo should be considered ideal and showed no conception of ways in which Federal aid might be used to create new and more flexible patterns of learning and research. The rising stars of American educations, such as Brekeley and Michigan, are reaching greatness by effective use of government, are reaching greatness by effective use of government support. If Harvard intends to eschew such innovation, it must think ahead with sufficient clarity to vince the academic community that Harvard intends, nevertheless, to have a future. The Cheever report would convince most readers that Harvard regards the future as a regrettable, albeit unavoidable, prospect.

The two Faculty meetings devoted to Federal aid were sad illustrations of the President's failure to guide the articulate expression of Faculty opinion. He simply threw open the question of University-government relations and invited Faculty comments.

Mr. Pusey seems not to distinguish between the use of a committees to keep him in contact with the Faculty and the Faculty in contact with situations, and the use of committees to gather information. Where Mr. Bundy brought the question of expansion to the Faculty floor and then appointed a committee to make further studies, the President, without preliminaries, simply selected a committee to discuss the use of final examinations. And while the Ford committee on admissions reported to the Faculty, the committee on fallout shelters made its report to the President.

There is no question that Mr. Pusey wants to hear Faculty opinion: he usually asks for comments from the Faculty, and is highly accessible to those who want to see him. But in seeking individual Faculty opinion, he has bypassed its organized expression, which makes particularly distressing the difficulty most professors find in communicating with the President. Many who speak with him report that he seldom discusses University matters of his own volition. To those who come with particular problems, he is often inclined to deliver lectures on the history of situations rather than to face substantive content. And, too often, Mr. Pusey appears anxious to deal with the future by waiting until it has become part of the history of which be is so fond.

The consequence of this situation is that the Faculty, both collectively and individually, feels that it has little influence upon the President's decisions. The Faculty does not express concerted opinions spontaneously: attitudes must be elicited through calculated and open-minded contact with its members, organized by skillful use of committees and Faculty meetings, and articulated into policy by administrators who appear responsive to Faculty opinion. It is not enough to throw a problem into a Faculty meeting, as if it were a clay pigeon, and wait to see who takes a shot at it.

Conceivable, the Administration is now lobbying quietly for some Federal aid program that it has created from last fall's disorganized and somewhat confused expressions. But so far as outsiders--and this includes the Faculty--can tell, the Administration has done nothing and decided nothing.