'Cam' Project Faculty Committee To Begin Its Investigation Friday

The special Faculty committee investigating the Cambridge Project will meet for the first time Friday afternoon.

Harvard is considering whether to join the Project, which would use M.I.T. computers for social science research funded by the Defense Department. The project has come under strong radical atack as an alleged aid to counter-revolutionary warfare.

Harvey Brooks, dean of Engineering and Applied Physics and chairman of the committee, announced the names of the eight committee members at Tuesday's Faculty meeting.

The seven other members are: Richard J. Herrnstein, professor of Psychology; Herbert C. Kelman, Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics; Anthony C. Oettinger 51, professor of Linguistics and Gordon McKay Professor of Applied Mathematics; Donald P. Warwick, lecturer on Social Relations; John Womac Jr. '59, assistant professor of History: I, Bernard Cohen '37, professor of the History of Science, and Edward L. Pattullo, director of the Center for Behavioral Sciences.

Recommendation

Cohen and Pattullo had been named earlier; they and Brooks are all members of the Faculty Committee on Research Policy, to which the new committee will report. The Research Policy Committee will then make a recommendation to the Faculty, which in turn will advise the Corporation on how, if at all, Harvard should be associated with the Cambridge Project.

Brooks said yesterday that his committee will hold some open meetings and some closed sessions. He added that he hopes his group can make a recommendation to the Reserach Policy Committee by the end of this month.

Most members of the Brooks committee have not yet expressed a strong feeling either for or against the project. Pattullo, however, seems to favor a Harvard link with the Project. while Womack, a leader of the Faculty's "liberal caucus," said Tuesday that he was "strongly prejudiced against the idea."

Pattullo's Center for the Behavioral Sciences withdrew an application for re-search grants from the National Science Foundation (NSF) after the Project was publicized. Without official Harvard endorsement of the Project, Pattullo has said, individual Harvard participants "would he in a 'beggars at the table' position-wholly dependent on the M.I.T. group."

Womack based his argument against the Project on two points. First, he said, "projects like this attract a horde of people, most of them with absurd ideas for research." More importantly, he said, "I suspect that the people getting most use out of the Project will be the Defense Department, and at this moment in American politics. I don't trust Defense to make the use of it that I would like."

Kelman said that the Project was "an opportunity not to be dismissed lightly" but added that he is "strongly opposed to military research." The major issue for Kelman seems to be freedom of inquiry; "I wouldn't want to limit the rights of others to do such research unless the call for limitation was extremely strong," he said.

Herrnstein, chairman of the Psychology Department, said that "people in my department are likely to be active users of the Project." But Herrnstein, who is a leader of the Faculty's "conservative caucus," added that he is "trying to have an open mind about it."

Oettinger withdrew an application for funds from the Cambridge Project after agreeing to serve on the committee.

Brooks said the committee is soliciting letters with "thoughtful opinions" on the Project from "as wide a group in the community as possible." Such letters should be addressed to Brooks at 217 Pierce Hall.