College, GSAS Community To Use Cambridge Project

Professors and students in the College and the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences received the green light yesterday for applying to the Defense Department-sponsored Cambridge Project for social and behavioral science grants.

The Faculty raised no objections at its meeting yesterday to the recommendation of the Committee on Research Policy that individual Faculty members and students be allowed to sign contracts with the controversial Project.

Several Faculty members, however, did protest against the Committee's additional recommendation that Harvard join M. I. T. on the Cambridge Project policy board. President Pusey accordingly agreed not to appoint representatives to the policy board until the Faculty has debated the issue.

That concession appears to be of little consequence, though. Two conservative members of the Faculty subcommittee which studied the Cambridge Project indicated last night that Harvard Faculty members will probably join M. I. T. professors in forming Project policy whether or not they are on the policy board.

Whether or not Harvard joins the policy board "is not really significant," said Edward L. Pattullo, director of the Center for the Behavioral Sciences. "Unofficial policy makers will just be self-appointed, whereas official representatives would be appointed by President Pusey."

The question of official participation on the policy board "is largely a false issue," Richard J. Herrnstein, professor of Psychology, added.

Quick Action

The Faculty had to act quickly yesterday even to delay the decision of whether to join the policy board. Pusey agreed with Dean Ford in late September that the Committee on Research Policy- not the Faculty as a whole- would serve as spokesman for Faculty opinion on the Cambridge Project.

Harvey Brooks. dean of Engineering and Applied Physics and chairman of the subcommittee whose majority recommendation the Research Policy Committee adopted Monday, explained to the Faculty yesterday how his subcommittee arrived at its decision in favor of Harvard's joining the policy board. But he prefaced.his statement by saying that it was "for the information of the Faculty, not for action."

At the close of Brooks' speech, however, Mark Ptashue, lecturer on Biochemistry and Molecular Biology, took the floor and asked for "fuller discussion of the matter among the Faculty." As an example of the "extremely difficult and possibly decisive questions" raised by the Cambridge Project, Ptashue cited Section 203 of the recently enacted Military Procurement Bill, which forbids the Defense Department to fund "any research project or study" not having "a direct and apparent relationship to a specific military function."

Lack of Support

A motion to vote on whether to ask Pusey to delay a decision on the Project until the Faculty had discussed it failed to gain the four-fifths support it needed. But minutes later Everett I. Mendelsohn, associate professor of the History of Science, asked Pusey if he thought he had heard the Faculty's opinion on the Project, and Pasey answered. "I assume I have, through the report of the Committee on Research Policy."

Several Faculty members shouted "No" to this. John Kenneth Galbraith, Paul M. Warburg Professor of Economies, then asked Pusey the same question which earlier had required a four-fifths vote to even be considered by the Faculty: "Will you see to it that no decision on the Cambridge Project will take place until the Faculty places the matter on its docket?"

Pusey argued that "a number of professors here are eager to have access to Cambridge Project funds and have been waiting a long time for them." But after Galbraith said that the Faculty would leave the question of individual participation in the Project "to individual needs and consciences." Pusey agreed to delay his decision on joining the policy board.

Ptashue said last night that he was "disappointed that an issue as important as this was presented, without any opportunity for Faculty discussion or vote, by a committee that is appointed rather than elected." The Committee on Research Policy voted. 11 to 8, on Monday in favor of Harvard's joining the Project policy board: the alternative of not joining the board- supported by a minority of both the Brooks subcommittee and the Research Policy Committee- was not presented to the Faculty yesterday.

The Faculty will discuss the Project either at a special meeting this month or at its regular January meeting. Brooks said last night that he was "somewhat disturbed at the way the Project was held over" by the Faculty: both he and Herrnstein referred to the Harvard people who have refrained from participating in the Project since its beginning last June as "good soldiers."

Kind of Research

The resolution adopted by the Committee on Research Policy said that the Brooks subcommittee "found no evidence for the claim that the kind of research proposed under the Project was inherently 'immoral' or 'repressive.'...[it found that] the Project has been basic research, unrelated to military programs except in the sense that such research relates to all programs involving human beings."

"The subcommittee took as its fundamental premise," Brooks told the Faculty yesterday, "that to deny our Faculty members or students permission to participate [in the Cambridge Project] is inconsistent with any meaningful definition of academic freedom. Once this fundamental premise is accepted, according to a majority of the subcommittee, Harvard as an institution cannot remain wholly uninvolved, but must accept responsibility for the direction and balance of the work by sharing control of the enterprise with M. I. T."

According to Brooks, the subcommittee agreed unanimously:

"that the development of computer based techniques and substantive research was important for the future of the social sciences at Harvard:

"that there was no firm basis for denying permission to individuals or groups in the Harvard community to apply for and accept funds from the Cambridge Project:

"that Harvard should create a committee, including some people not primarily interested in the particular kind of work envisioned in the Cambridge Project, to develop plans for Harvard participation in this area, to seek diversified funding, and to consider policy and ethical issues which may arise in connection with computer-based social research and data banks."