Kennedy and Harvard: A Complicated Tie

John F. Kennedy '40 made his last visit to Harvard as a football fan. Taking a balmy Staurday afternoon off from politicking and official business, the President attended the first half of the Oct. 19 Harvard-Columbia football game.

He looked tan and relaxed; apparently he enjoyed himself although he did not express much emotion. Kennedy stood up to cheer only once as the teams moved up and down the field, scoring only three points apiece. Most of the time the President smoked a small cigar, chewed on his sunglasses, and chatted with aides Dave Powers and Larry O'Brien.

After watching the half-time show--in which both bonds razzed him lightly--Kennedy left Harvard for the last time to visit the grave of his son Patrick in a Brookline Cemetery.

Chose Princeton First

John Kennedy had first come to Harvard 27 years earlier. He entered the college in the fall of 1936--a thin, 19-year-old graduate of Choate with a mop of unruly hair and a tooth-paste ad smile. Originally, he did not want to come to Harvard. Kennedy enrolled at Princeton in 1935, but a case of yellow jaundice forced him to withdraw. His four years as a Harvard undergraduate were to be inconsistent, as were his later relations with the University.

Surrounded by a large group of friends, Kennedy joined many organizations, but gained eminence in none. Despite thinness and back trouble he worked hard at swimming and football, but enjoyed only moderate success in them. Although undeniably quick and bright, his academic record was generally mediocre, and he made little impression on Faculty members. Yet despite the over-all mediocrity of his record, Kennedy did well enough senior year to graduate cum laude--better than 70 per cent of his classmates. And his thesis on appeasement at Munich earned a magna and became a best-seller.

After graduation, Kennedy was active in alumni affairs. He served on the Board of Overseers and received an honorary Doctor of Laws. But as a Congressman, he once told an audience of Winthrop House undergraduates that nothing at Harvard had been useful to him in politics.

He received wide support from Harvard Faculty members in the 1960 campaign. Amid great publicity, he brought a number of them into his Administration. But Kennedy conferred great power upon only one Harvard figure--McGeorge Bundy, a Republican who had been only a quiet Kennedy supporter in the campaign. And Kennedy never won from the intellectuals the deep committment they gave to Adlai Stevenson.

As one friend of the President remarked; "Jack Kennedy was extremely smart. He could grasp large things and detail very quickly. But he was not an intellectual. He had respect for intellectuals. The most important point, though, is that he knew how to use them well."

"Harvard was not an important aspect of political reality to him," the friend continued. "He knew that if he over-emphasized Harvard, it would get him in wrong with the general electorate. he did not put Harvard in the forefront."

Brain-Trusters

This point was made clear several times. During a telephone speech to a rally of "brain-trusters" in Sanders Theatre, Kennedy praised the role of Harvard advisers in his presidential campaign.

"It has converted politicians into eggheads, and eggheads into politicians," he said, "and both groups have benefited." Most of the "eggheads" laughed appreciatively when Abraham Chayes '43, professor of Law and Kennedy's Cambridge liason man quipped, "That's the first time any of us have had a direct line to Sen. Kennedy since the campaign began."

Kennedy carried within him a deep cultural divide. He was marked both by the intellectual and social values of Harvard and by the political outlook of the Boston Irish. In his speech to the Harvard Alumni Association after receiving his honorary degree in 1956, Kennedy discussed these conflicting viewpoints.

It is important for politicians to consult intellectuals, Kennedy said, "to prevent us from becoming imprisoned by our own slogans" and "to bathe us in the cooling waters of the scholastic pool." But politics cannot easily be aligned with the intellectual goals of "the advancement of knowledge and the dissemination of truth," Kennedy argued, "Our political parties, our politicians are interested, of necessity, in winning popular support--a majority; and Harvard--less important than the needs of gaining and maintaining power.

Years at College

Intellectual concerns were also clearly secondary to John Kennedy during his first two years in the college. Somewhat strangely, though, he also seemed less interested than in politics than he did in athletics and social activity.

As a freshman, rooming in Weld 32, his first project was to make the freshman football team. He managed to do this, despite his low weight of 156 pounds, and became a reasonably sure-fingered end. The next year, however, because of sprained back, Kennedy did less well in football. He played occasionally on the junior varsity, and then quit football at the end of the season.

Swimming, however, was Kennedy's favorite sport and the one in which he performed best. He swam back-stroke four years and "worked damn hard at it," a friend said. Coach Harold Ulen remembers him as a good swimmer but not an outstanding one; he also recalls that Kennedy was frequently ill.

Kennedy tried to make up for his illness by determination. In his sophomore year he was sent to Stillman Infirmary diet was too skimpy, he had his roommate Torbert McDonald (now a Congressman) smuggle in steak and frappes. Then Kennedy sneaked out of the infirmary for the time trials. But he failed to qualify.

Kennedy also lost the first election he entered at Harvard. One of 35 candidates, he failed to place among the top six in the first round of balloting for class president.

His second venture into politics was more successful. Kennedy was elected chairman of the Freshman Smoker committee that brought sexy Gertrude Neissen to sing in Memorial Hall.

Spee Club

In the fall of his sophomore year Kennedy joined Hasty Pudding and the Spee Club. He used the Pudding only occasionally but for three years he was an active member of the Spee and many of his friendships centered in the club.

That second fall Kennedy also was elected to the Business Board of the CRIMSON. After making the paper, however, he was never much concerned with it, although he does appear in the picture of the CRIMSON staff in the 1940 Yearbook.

Kennedy's academic record during his two years at the college was mediocre. As a Freshman he received C's in English, French, and History 1, and an B in Economics 1. This placed him in Group IV. He was in Group IV again at the end of sophomore year, although he had produced one good long paper in government tutorial for Authur Holcombe, then an associate professor of Government. Aware of Kennedy's strong Democratic background, Holcombe assigned Kennedy work on Rep. Bertrand Snell, an upstate New York Republican who often spoke for private power interests. Kennedy apparently enjoyed his study of Snell.

The first half of Kennedy's junior year was much like the two years that preceded it. By this time, however, Kennedy's father was a news-making ambassador to Great Britain, and Neville Chamberiain had appeased Hitler at Munich. Jack Kennedy decided to spend the second semester of his junior year in Europe and he received University permission to do so.

After spending the spring in Paris, Kennedy traveled to Russia, Turkey, Palestine, the Balkans, and Germany. He stayed in American embassies, and sent back detailed reports to his father.

Thesis

In September, 1939, shortly after the Nazis and Russians invaded Poland, Kennedy returned or his senior year at Harvard. To make up time lost the previous spring he took additional courses and received B's in all of them. But his major work of the year was his thesis: Appeasement at Munich--The inevitable Result of the Slowness of the Conversion of the British Democracy form a Disarmament to a Rearmament Policy.

The thesis is a long, complex analysis of the reasons for Britain's slow response to the rearmament of Germany. Its crux is the contention that men like Chamberiain and Baldwin do not carry the principal responsibility for Munich, but, rather, that Munich was caused by deeper forces inherent in democracy and capitalism. These forces Kennedy saw as apathy, concern with profits and security, pacifism, and fear of regimentation.

Kennedy concluded: "Most of the critics have been firing at the wrong target. The Munich Pact itself should not be object of criticism but rather the underlying factors, such as the state of British opinion and the condition of Britain's armaments which made 'surrender' inevitable. To blame one man, such as Baldwin, for the unpreparedness of British armaments is illogical and unfair, given the conditions of democratic government."

Kennedy graduated from Harvard in June, 1940--very much pleased with his senior year's work. In the Yearbook he listed his intended vocation as law. His Winthrop House room-mate Charles Rousmaniere (now chairman of the Harvard Alumni Fund) says Kennedy told most questioners that he wished to go into journalism. In truth, Kennedy was very much unsure about the future. He did not decide on a career in politics until after the destruction of his PT boat in the Pacific and the death of his brother Joe (who had been two years ahead of him at Harvard).

What Kennedy did not do at Harvard is as interesting as what he did despite the great amount of political agitation concerning the New Deal. Kennedy stayed out of politics and away from campus politicos. He was a member of the Catholic Club four years and attended church services regularly. He never joined the Young Democrats and attended hardly any political meetings at all. In Winthrop his room-mates were athletes and his conversation seldom touched politics, although he did give mild support to Roosevelt. In letters to his father he backed Joseph Kennedy's approval of Neville Chamberlain but he did not speak much about this to his friends.

Friends recall him as generally carefree and happy-go-lucky. Rousmanier says Kennedy was "very well-liked and admired" Another friend said Kennedy exuded "an aura of leadership even in personal affairs. If you were on his side, you were really in and that was tremendous. If you were not, he would woo you if he wanted you and could usually succeed in getting his way. If he didn't want you, he would cast you in outer darkness."

Along with these qualities, Kennedy had an excellent sense of humor. "If he had been nothing but a humorist," Cleveland Amory said, "he would have been famous."

The same magnetism and humor were apparent on Jan. 9, 1963, when as President-elect Kennedy visited Harvard Yard for the last time. "I am here to discuss your grades with President Pusey," Kennedy told the crowd that greeted him before a meeting of the Board of Overseers. "I shall represent your interests."

As President, Kennedy did not have time enough to maintain the same interest in Harvard he had taken while a Senator. However, he did make arrangements this summer for a continuing connection with the University. He signed an agreement with President Pusey for a museum and library of Kennedy Administration papers that will be built on the grounds of the Business School across the Charles River from Dunster House.

Tragically, this library will now be constructed much sooner than anticipated. It will perpetuate indefinitely the complicated tie between John F. Kennedy and his alma mater