Pusey's Report on Last Year: 'Dismal' and 'Costly'

TO THE MEMBERS OF THE BOARD OF OVERSEERS:

GENTLEMEN - I have the honor to present to you a report for the academic year 1968-69.

Although the last twelve months brought numerous important constructive achievements, 1968-69 at Harvard must, it seems to me, be described in a summary view as a dismal year. And I am afraid it will also appear in time to have been very costly.

Our troubles of last year were widely reported, but it was never easy for the alumni to see them in perspective. There is nothing unique about a university beset with internal difficulties in these times. Virtually all of them are- in this country and abroad. But this reflection did not make our troubles any less painful.

From present perspective the distressing events of 1968-69 appear to have represented a culmination (if not a final resolution) of a sequence of misbegotten attitudes and events which began to evolve several years back. Two years ago I called attention to the existence among us of a small group of would-be revolutionaries. I said then- and I believe now- that they live in a world of fantasy if they think the United States is fertile soil for the kind of violent internal upheaval they have in mind. But I failed to do justice to the widespread and varied malaise in both student and faculty populations which then supported and has continued to provide a favorable environment for them. In my view, this malaise in academic communities is not something peculiar to them, but in large measure reflects a deep and wide disquietude- born of legitimate concern, disappointment, uncertainty, frustration, anxiety, and to a degree also fear- at present characteristic of society as a whole.

The chain of events which I now recall may be said to have begun with the effort of the revolutionaries in 1966. Introducing a new style and a new intensity in campus political activities to obstruct the free movement of Robert McNamara, then Secretary of Defense, when he paid a visit here as a guest of the Institute of Politities. Such treatment of any individual would have been abhorrent; accorded to a member of the President's Cabinet it was nothing less than shocking which, conceivably, it was intended to be. The Administrative Board of the College was puzzled as to what to do with the offenders in this case, for the tactics of force then introduced in political protest had not previously been employed or even contemplated here- at least not in the memory of those who now have the University in trust.

As you know the responsibility for student discipline, assigned to the separate faculties of the University generations ago, had for a very long time been exercised by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences by two Administrative Boards, one for the College, another for the Graduate School. But in this instance the Administrative Board for the College, uncertain in a novel situation, referred the issue back to the Faculty. The members of the Board were especially concerned not to take any action which could possibly be interpreted as an attempt to interfere with the free expression of political views. In the settlement, though no punishment was dispensed, there appeared to be widespread agreement, as the then Dean of the College proposed, that a line should be drawn to make it perfectly clear that in no future demonstration, for whatever purpose, could tactics inhibiting the free movement of any individual be accepted in our community.

Next came "the Dow incident" which I also discussed in my report two years ago. Again, coercive tactics were deliberately employed. Again the claim was made that so great was the grievance that such tactics were warranted. And again a cry for amnesty was raised. Though a considerable number of the faculty, moved by the alleged motive, were again willing to overlook the reprehensible act, and so opposed any punishment, this time some of the participants were admonished and others were put on probation. Once more every effort was taken to make it clear that the issue was not, as asserted in this case, the war in Vietnam, but rather the coercive tactics employed by some of the demonstrators, tactics which it was assumed all of us but the few revolutionaries bad by this time agreed had no place in a university community.

In December a year ago came the occupation of Paine Hall in advance of a scheduled meeting of the Faculty of Aras and Sciences, professedly over the issue of the ROTC then under consideration, but surely also in some degree as another test of strength and a bid for attention in an effort to win cohorts for their cause. This time a more disturbing development followed, for when the Administrative Board of the College by a split vote recommended requiring withdrawal from the College for five students on probation for participation in the Dow incident, the Faculty, taking back the power previously granted to the Board, voted to overturn their decision in favor of continued probation and suspension of the requirement to with draw. They did, however, accept the Board's recommendation of probation for 52 other students.

There followed the turbulent dramatic events of last April. Despite statements to the contrary in the press and in various other reports, neither the responsible administrative officers of the University nor the Fellows were taken by surprise by these developments. They had seen them coming for a long time, had in fact come to think of them almost as inevitable because of the dog-like persistence of some few determined young rebels. What was perplexing was the failure of the community at large accurately to have assessed the rebels' intent. The occupation of University Hall last April was brought about by a small number of the revolutionaries against the wishes of the majority of their followers. In the event, however, their ranks were greatly swollen by many young people who were genuinely and seriously concerned about the professed issues advanced.

The revolutionaries who have stirred up these disturbances have always been candid. They have said repeatedly that their aim is to advance "The Movement" and that where this end is served, anything goes. Specific causes are adopted at one time or another primarily because of the potential they offer for attention and popular support.

What we have been trying to say all along in answer to their repeated attacks, however, is that anything does not go here. For example, not the right to interfere with the free move movement of other people, nor the use of force, coercion and threats to try to have one's way. Reason and civility, persuasion and respect for differences of opinion- these hard-won conditions for civilized discourse still have their honored place among us. And must have. And will have. It is not surprising if the revolutionaries do not agree, but unfortunately, as an indication of the difficulty of our present situation, I must report that not all faculty even yet concur in this resolve.

The occupiers of University Hall last April, having entered the building and forced the rightful occupants out, announced they had not come to negotiate but were prepared only to hear their demands had been granted. The calling in the police to clear the building the next morning was my responsibility. As I have said many times, this seemed and seems to me to have been the least bad of the alternatives then available. But the community obviously- and I think, understandably- experienced deep shock over this event, and for many the issue instantly became, not the provocation, not another violation of a fundamental and agreed-upon principle of university life, but the police; and for some- I cannot say how many- so it remains.

Rather than to entrust the responsibility for discipline in this matter to the Administrative Boards in which they had shown lack of confidence, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences took the exceptional step in the emergency of electing a special committee of its own (augmented by student members) to deal with the students charged in this occupation of University Hall. A few cases where Corporation appointees were involved were handled later under procedures worked out by the President and Fellows in discharge of their statutory responsibility.

This Committee of Fifteen recommended a variety of sanctions including a number of separations. These recommendations were heard and supported by the Faculty near the end of the term. But more important, I think, this Faculty formally adopted in June, by an over whelming majority, an Interim Statement on Rights and Responsibilities, drafted by the Committee of Fifteen, which was intended to redefine and make unmistakably clear where the line between permissible and impermissible behavior must be drawn here. There was widespread agreement that such a line was required especially in a time when many people feel so deeply about various issues, and are so ardent and so confident about the rightness of their cause that thy disdain democratic procedures and act as if a sense of right strongly held not only excuses, but even makes virtuous the suppression of the rights of others and the contemptuous treatment of contrary views. So far have some in our time departed from the University's basic liberal conviction.

HOWEVER, our troubles with the use of force and attempts to gain concessions by coercive tactics did not come to an end last year. We have had a series of incidents during the first semester of the 1969-70 academic year. Very few if any students were involved in the attack made by the Weatherman faction of SDS on the Center for International Affairs in the early fall. But students have several times since committed offenses against the principles stated in the Interim Statement of Rights and Responsibilities. For the 1969-70 academic year a successor Committee an Rights and Responsibilities to last year's Committee of Fifteen has been authorized, in part by your vote giving the necessary statutory permission, to hear and decide cases calling for discipline of students by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences under the Interim Statement. In their first challenge the members of this committee have acted with courage and dispatch on cases brought to their attention by the Dean of the College. However infringements are not confined to undergraduates, and it remains to be seen how other faculties will perform in this regard. At issue all along have been actions and deeds, not thoughts or opinions. But, in my view, tactics of force will finally cease here only when they are outlawed by widespread popular revulsion against them. I hope and pray this day will come soon. Meanwhile we have yet to try, as other universities have done or are now doing, to find for the longer range an expeditious way to handle discipline in cases of this kind, perhaps by some dispassionate university-wide machinery, or at least with better coordination among the efforts of the separate faculties. That is matter for a later report.

In the interim the difficult problem of the deliberate violation of the prohibition against coercive tactics has recently been given a new twist by the employment of such means by groups of black students and others for ends with which we all deeply sympathize. Harvard has now acquired a fairly considerable black population. This year there are more than 600 black students enrolled in the various schools of the University. There are more than 40 black faculty and other officers and more than 550 black employee's. Harvard's concern to provide increased educational opportunity for black students is no recent development, though the process, slow in developing, has been hastened by the national temper. Each faculty is now making a heightened effort to recruit both more black students and more black employees. Almost all of them have allocated large funds for these purposes (in most cases more funds than they really can afford) and have appointed specially chosen administrative officers to facilitate the search.

It is obvious that blacks at Harvard are far from a homogeneous population and ver they tend now to coalesce as they increasingly see in their blackness a distinctive value and force. This seems to me both regrettable and sad for various reasons, but not least because, in specific matters now under consideration, the aims they profess through their Organization for Black Unity, and the aims we seek- to increase impressively educational and employment opportunity for all minority groups including blacks- are virtually identical. They and we- if we must be separated- should at least be working together and not in suspicion or at cross purposes in this important and urgent matter. This we sincerely want to do; there is so much hard work to be done. But thus far cooperation has not proved easy. I do not know how the issue is to be resolved. We shall go on trying to achieve the widened opportunity for blacks we are seeking. We are now making numerous efforts toward this end, hoping for real substantive improvement. The one thing we must avoid in these efforts, it seems to me, is to get "hung up" on disagreements concerning percentages. What is required is a greatly increased opportunity for minorities which will be fair.

Meanwhile it is not too much to say that Harvard itself is now under going a kind of revolution- perhaps several kinds! There are revolutions in tempo and pace, but also of substance. The speed of change, observable in marked degree during the pastyear in the Law and Medical Schools, is sufficiently impressive that did time allow I should like to give a detailed account of dramatic changes in these and possibly other areas. But the speed of change is perhaps less important than a major adjustment now going on in the University to a fundamental alteration in the intellectual climate of our time. Let me try to suggest what this is.

Despite our long involvement in professional education it can be said that rational analysis and reserved judgment, the scholar's concerns, used to be our predominant, if not our almost exclusive preoccupation. Such qualities of mind ought always to be nurtured here. But now everywhere one turns within the University among faculty as well as students, one senses a widening impatience with narrow scholasticism, that kind of scholarship which exists for its own sake. There grows among us, instead, a deeply-held conviction that it is not sufficient to pursue knowledge for itself, but that somehow knowledge must be put to work for moral, social, and political ends. What is wanted is an education which will recognize this and help to make it possible.

Perhaps the most vivid single example at Harvard of this force now at work here and everywhere in higher education is a new program developed last year in the Kennedy School of Government. The faculty of this School is made up of scholars from a number of fields many of whom have at one time or another been involved in the practical work of government. In thinking about their function in recent years they appear to have come to the conclusion first, that we now have neither the men in public life, nor the knowledge required to solve the many frightfully complicated problems of race, poverty, pollution, decay of cities, inadequate medical care, educational deficiency, law enforcement and all the rest that enfeeble and oppress our society: and second, that the nation lacks a program of education likely to produce the men required to formulate and administer government policies to cope with such problems.

The School's new program in Public Policy has been designed to try to produce such men. At the same time it aims to help meet the hunger many young people now feel who are not averse to the rigorous preparation necessary to equip themselves for a constructive contribution toward improvement in our national life. The new program is to be staffed and administered in collaboration with other faculties, initially the professional faculties of business, law and medicine, and the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Two degrees will be offered, the master's and, with the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, the doctor's: and courses of study leading to joint degrees with other faculties will be encouraged. This attempt at a wholly new and timely approach to education for public service is the kind of program, drawing on many parts of the University, which could be attempted only in such a varied academic community as ours. It is founded in the recognition that, if intelligent public policy is to be formulated, we must now have at the highest levels of government men who combine specialized knowledge in some professional or academic discipline with mastery of the sophisticated new methods recently developed for policy analysis- men who will also bring to their work a new professional ability as well as desire to relate knowledge to moral and political purposes. This last is the chief point of all. What is needed are professionals who can convert specialized knowledge into effective programs- that is, put to work the knowledge won by the social sciences, and liberal and humane learning. A quotation from Dean Price's description will suggest both the rationale and aims of the new program:

No other national government has anything like the American proportion of Ph.D.'s in its administrative service. But this success has been accomplished mainly in the specialized fields- in agriculture, through the land-grant colleges; and in the scientific professions generally, through the schools of engineering medicine, public health, forestry, and so on. In addition, the law schools continued to turn out men who rose to the top echelons of government through their ability to do policy staff work in fields (now declining in number and importance) where a man is not too greatly handicapped by ignorance of the modern techniques of policy analysis.

If we are to find ways to educate men who will go into higher reaches of government service, we must not only provide them with the right kind of intellectual abilities, but must also consider the structure of careers in American society. We must add to the kind of specialized knowledge that is provided to members of a learned profession the kind of knowledge by which its specially is integrated, together with others, into a national policy. If the government service is dominated by the specialized professions, it is likely to be very good at dealing with the less important problems, and incapable of identifying the big ones. And as long as the upper reaches of the government service are not monopolized by a career system, but filled in part by men who move back and forth between government and private life, we must offer our graduates the opportunity to combine public service education with preparation for some career that can be used as an alternative.

The intent of the new program in public policy is to produce scholars, lawyer, physicians, business executives and others who will be able to work in and out of government, pursuing private careers and public service- scholars at one time, activists at another as so many young people want now to be- who because of their ability, interest and training will be ready to bring to the public service the peculiar blend of specialized knowledge and broad political awareness which, together with administrative competency, are now manifestly needed in government if effective public policy is to be formulated and administered.

CHANGE, reappraisal, and development were in evidence everywhere in the university last year as they are this- most of it clearly constructive. In the Faculty of Arts and Sciences a number of efforts at review and improvement initiated earlier continued to move forward despite the repeated disruptive events which virtually monopolized this Faculty's attention after the middle of the year.

The Report of the Committee on Recruitment and Retention of Faculty (the so-called "Dunlop Committee") completed the preceding spring and mentioned in my report last year was considered by the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in November 1968, and its proposals adopted. The Committee, having considered carefully all circumstances affecting faculty employment, made a number of recommendations designed to make more attractive a teaching post here. It was especially concerned for the well-being of young faculty. This was the first such comprehensive review in this area in many years.

Another committee had been appointed in the previous year under the chairmanship of Professor Robert Lee Wolff to consider what changes time and new developments had made desirable in the practices of the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. This committee recommended a reduction of approximately 20 per cent (from 3000 to 2400 students) in the size of the Graduate School, to be effected over the next five years. The committee felt that the number of graduate students had become too large for the faculty adequately to instruct, that the need for large numbers to provide college and university teachers had become less pressing, and that the quality of our whole effort in this area could be improved by such reduction. There were also a number of recommendations (most of them addressed to the departments) designed to improve the lot of the graduate student. Particular attention was given to the perplexing problems of financial aid. This report was finally considered and approved in principle last May.

Still another committee had been appointed in an earlier year under the chairmanship of Professor Henry Rosovsky to plan a program in African and Afro-American Studies. Its report, produced after long and careful study, was widely noticed and acclaimed. The Faculty reviewed and approved it last February. Among other things it recommended that concentration in Afro-American Studies, a new and as yet not fully defined field, be combined with partial concentration in another established subject, that the program in Afro-American Studies he administered for the time being by a standing committee rather than by a department, and that African Studies be the concern of a different committee. At the time the various provisions of this report won wide approval, seeming to almost everyone to be both fair and wise. A number of them were altered later by faculty action. Nevertheless, a program was established and, with a variety of course offerings and a faculty of nearly a dozen (most of them on term or visiting appointments), led by Professor Ewart Guinier, it is now off to a promising beginning.

Still another committee of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, a Committee on the Role of the Faculty in the Houses, was at work last year under the chairmanship of Professor George Homans, studying the undergraduate Houses to see how far they are realizing the high educational aims for which they were designed, and more especially, what can be done to strengthen and enliven faculty participation in them.

Thus programs affecting faculty, graduate students, undergraduates, and black students were all being carefully examined when the year began. In addition in November a new Standing Committee on Research Policy was organized. Later in the year, at the Faculty's request, several committees were appointed to study the feasibility of the proposed merger with Radcliffe, one of the most important issues now confronting this Faculty and the Governing Boards. I suspect a considerable portion of next year's report will be concerned with this subject.

Finally I must mention the appointment of a committee "to reexamine and report on the structure, procedures, and decision-making processes of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, including ways in which students might participate in reaching decisions." This committee was requested by the Faculty in January in the wake of the Paine Hall incident after the previously mentioned faculty reversal of a decision by its Administrative Board. By this time it had become apparent to many that the Faculty had grown too large to function effectively under its old rules. There was also the question of how students under this Faculty could participate in decision-making. The so-called Fainsod Committee was then appointed, but the disturbances of the spring prevented it from completing its work until the fall of 1969. An account of the treatment accorded its recommendations by the Faculty, not yet concluded, will also have to be part of a later report. But clearly the clearly the Faculty of Arts and Sciences was busy about important matters during the past year before the shattering distractions of April set in.

Then in the highly charged atmosphere of the aftermath of early April, the Faculty called for the establishment of a committee "to investigate the causes of the crisis; to assume full responsibility for disciplining the students in the forcible occupation of University Hall; and to consult with representatives of the other faculties of the University and with student representatives in order to recommend changes in the governance of the University." This so-called Committee of Fifteen was composed of ten faculty members who, as mentioned earlier, were elected by the Faculty (breaking with traditional policy by which all committees had previously been appointed) and five student members, three from the College and one each from Radcliffe and the Graduate School. For the remainder of the spring the attention of the College was largely focused on the work of this Committee. Its reports have been made public and need not be reviewed here. In my view its most significant accomplishments during months of carnest and protracted labor were the carrying cut of its responsibility for students discipline and its success in a turbulent time in securing overwhelming Faculty approval at the end of the 1968-69 academic year of its Interim Statement on Rights and Responsibilities and in designing temporary machinery for handling during 1969-70 cases of student discipline arising from infractions of the statement's provisions.

A WORD must be added concerning this Faculty's action on ROTC, an issue prominent on this and other campuses throughout the year. Questions about the appropriateness of ROTC programs in academic communities had been raised in many places in the preceding year as an almost inevitable part of the growing criticism of all military activity, which obviously resulted principally from the spreading and deepening hostility, especially marked on college campuses, to our participation in the war in Vietnam.

The pres and cons of the issue were widely discussed here in the autumn of 1968 Variant proposals concerning it were brought before the Faculty of Arts and Sciences in early December, but decision was postponed until a special meeting scheduled for Paine Hall on December 12- the meeting which was never held. When the Faculty returned to this matter in February there were four different plans before the meeting. The Faculty supported the proposal of the Student Faculty Advisory Council to withhold academic credit for courses offered by the military departments, to withdraw their listings from that Faculty's catalogue, and to request the Corporation to discontinue providing space for ROTC and to terminate the legally required academic appointments customarily given the military officers who served here (however only with our approval). The intent of this vote was not to abolish ROTC but to reduce it to extracurricular status. Negotiations were proceeding, in what would probably have proved a futile endeavor to reach a new agreement with the military within these limitations, when the matter heated up again. A letter which I sent to Dean Ford expressing the Corporation's view on this issue, which differed at important points from that of the Faculty, contributed to this effect. Then on April 17, the Faculty passed resolutions demanding that the University terminate any existing contract which provided the military services with any "special privilege or facilities" and that "the University enter into no new contract or informal arrangement concerning ROTC inconsistent with this principle." Subsequently, during the course of the past summer, all three services notified us they were withdrawing their units from Harvard- the Navy and the Air Force in June 1971, timed to match existing contracts, the Army at the conclusion of the 1969-70 academic year.

It is difficult for me to explain thefierceness and the sense of haste which the Faculty of Arts and Sciences showed in dealing with this issue. Certainly they had been on solid ground in raising questions about courses given in their name over which they did not have complete control and academic appointments made to their ranks by other than regular channels. So far as these were the issues, they deserved and received full support. My letter had tried to make this clear. But the validity of other aspects of their criticism, which seemed to be presented almost in a spirit of ecrasezl'infame, was less clear. And the small concern shown for the views of the students who were enrolled or might want to be enrolled in the ROTC units seemed to me shocking. As a matter of fact, it was only in June, almost as an afterthought, that the Faculty finally voted to authorize negotiations looking toward termination of the units not immediately, but as of June 30, 1971, in order to give most of those already enrolled opportunity to complete the program. It was also curious that in its debates on the subject the Faculty of Arts and Sciences paid scant attention to the fact that a considerable number of the men in the units were enrolled in the Business and Law Schools. But the issue is now closed, and the friendly association of many years between Harvard and the military services through which we assisted in providing for them many leaders of high competence will next year come to an end, a casualty of these troubled times.

As I said at the outset, it was a dismal year, and will prove a costly one. If there is anything demonstrably false in our recent experience, it is that tactics of violence can be productive of good, that "they get results." Yes, but what results!- in hours wasted and opportunities missed, in the increase in internal political activity at the expense of learning and scholarship, in the erosion of confidence and trust and respect, in the promotion of distrust and hostility, the injury done friendship, and the defeat of reason and love. Nor am I impressed by the statements of those young who maintained it was only in participating in disruptions- for them high adventure-that for the first time they really lived. If such are the requirements for meaningful existence we have indeed come to a sorry pass.

The losses to scholarship and to education from incessant political actively in times of mass hysteria are serious losses which must be reckoned. The circulation of books in our libraries plummeted last April and May. There is also the not inconsiderable loss the University suffers in the interruption of other aspects of its work and the sidetracking of important concerns when practically the whole of its administrative effort must be devoted to preventive measures. And the monetary losses are not inconsiderable. The University Hall affair cost Harvard approximately the equivalent of the annual salaries of two professors or the scholarship stipends of ten or more students. Even more serious are the extra costs required for the additional administrative officers and services needed to cope with the new destructive forces. These are some of the obvious internal costs, and there are others. These exercises in disruption with the attendant unease, confusion and bitterness they spread entail a serious threat to the academic profession. Doubts are already being raised in the minds of many of the most able and sensitive professors across the country, whose concern is for scholarship and teaching, about the desirability, wherever an opportunity for escape exists, of remaining in teaching positions befouled by political activity and contention. And no one knows how many of the ablest young will be turned away from the profession if campuses continue to be battlegrounds. More immediately serious, however, is the loss of confidence in universities on the part of the various publics which nurture and sustain them. This is now widespread and growing as is quite clear from recent actions of the Congress reflecting public opinion and reactions elsewhere. Here plans toward which we have been working for years have been forced aside, delayed if not terminated, good and promising plans I am confident any fair, rational and concerned appraisal would surely say.

It is perplexing to me why any people who live in universities and profess to care for them, however deep their concern about the shortcomings and injustices of contemporary society, should turn on them as the enemy, reviling them as if they were the creators and sustainers of what they call an obscene industrial military complex and an abhorrent way of life. It would be nice to think we had such power, or that by ourselves or in cooperation with other universities we had the wisdom and the strength instantly to correct all of society's ills, whereas what we have is only limited power to study them and in time produce men and women trained and determined to work to set them right.

Harvard has never appeared wicked to me and does not now- nor uninformed, nor callous nor indifferent. She continues to live in many minds and is as sensitive, knowledgeable and concerned, and as groping as they are. What we need in these difficult years is not the millenarianism of self-important revolutionaries, nor preoccupation with the limited objectives of any group of self-seekers, but a general community resolve to eschew rhetoric and recrimination, and to return to the University's age-old patience and courage to keep at its task. I hope we shall soon regain this stance.

It was a dismal year; but we must turn now to look ahead. As you know a committee made up of faculty and student, representatives from all departments of the University with representatives from among the alumni group and the two Governing Boards is now at work examining the present organization of the University to see where improvements can be made in order to protect it against recurrences of the kind of difficulties we experienced last year, or stated more positively, to see how the University's organization might be improved to facilitate its work. This committee, after broad consultation within the University, will report its findings to you, and you in your turn, as the alumni's elected representatives, will be expected to make recommendations for the consideration of the President and Fellows. It has been argued that this is not a propitious time for such a study. It may be that the disturbing events of the past year still weigh too prominently in all our thinking: and it may be that we are still too involved in similar continuing problems to be able to make wise and dispassionate provision for the long range future. But, wisely or not, we are started, and it seems to me we have no alternative but to move ahead.

I do not wish to prejudice the work of the study committee. I hope and trust that good for the long-range future of Harvard will come from its efforts. It surely will if- but only if- its work wins widespread support from our whole community, from all the schools and departments of the University, from the various groups of students and faculty in each, from administrative officers and governing boards. And also from the many groups of alumni whose experience of Harvard and whose affection and loyalty for her extend through graduating classes of more than seventy years. What is wanted in this effort of course is not simply opinion but informed and concerned opinion and also trust and goodwill and professional competence in weighing appropriate administrative organization. Surely the Harvard community should be able to meet these desiderata.

Meanwhile may I say I do not see the source of our recent and present difficulties in outmoded organizational structures, though our difficulties may well have been compounded because the reasons for and ways of operating these structures were too little understood within the community. It would be strange if this were not so, for we are a very large community and the people who make it up are constantly changing. Several thousand depart each spring. The replacements, gathered from all over the world, from many cultures and fabulously varied backgrounds, come newly into the community each fall. Something like three-quarters of the present members of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences have been members of this community for less than ten years. The student body of course changes almost entirely every quadrennium. They too, by design, are an enormously heterogeneous group from widely different backgrounds, with vastly different needs and aspirations. It is not surprising that misunderstandings occur among us and that it has become increasingly difficult to establish and maintain a unifying sense of common purpose. But it is to be hoped that new arrangements or adjustments in old ones can now be found which will at least moderate this problem.

I WOULD be remiss in discharging the obligations of my office if I did not before closing, direct attention to the financial conditions and needs of the University. Over the past twenty years the annual cost of operating the University rose from $28 million to $176 million. During the sixties the increase averaged approximately $12 million a year. While numerous important new programs were introduced, much of the increase represented response to inflation. Fortunately, as expenses rose, during this period, income kept pace. Endowment, tuition, and gift income grew steadily. Even more marked were the substantial annual increases in the large funds which came to the University, chiefly for research from various agencies of the Federal Government.

Last year for the first time in many years the support we received from the Federal Government showed no increase (in fact it declined by $200,000). Also last year, for the first time in many years, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, whose expenses constitute roughly a third of the University total, operated at a deficit. Its prospects for 1969-70 are no better, and for fiscal 1970-71 dimmer still. Though the combined operations of the whole University last year showed a small credit balance, the separate central University account was also seriously in the red, and the general financial situations of the Schools of Education, Divinity and Design are dangerously weak.

Further difficulties loom ahead. The School of Education has already been hard hit by reductions in federal expenditures. Now the School of Public Health, the Medical School, the Division of Engineering and Applied Physics and several of the departments threaten to be. Last year the School of Public Health (which has been receiving more than two-thirds of its support from federal sources, largely from the National Institutes of Health) for the second consecutive year experienced a reduction in the amount of federal funds received. In commenting on this fact Dean Snyder first deplored the effect of such reductions on research, particularly on the School's ability to initiate new projects especially by young scientists, and then sounded the following alarm: "As public needs increase, and as the School's opportunities become greater for significant contributions to human health, the message to the Faculty is unmistakable- we must use our best efforts to find more financial support for the work of the School." Dean Ebert, of the Medical School, expressed similar concern about the effects of federal cutbacks on research and training for research.

We have experienced a quarter century of rapid growth and greatly increased level of performance in higher education in the United States. I have pointed out in earlier reports that the Harvard faculty nearly quadrupled in numbers during this time, that the number of endowed professorships more than tripled, and that nearly half of the present physical space available to the University for its multitudinous purposes has been acquired during the past twenty years. Now, however, we are faced with a drastically altering situation, and it promises to be exceedingly difficult not only to effect further enrichment and development, but possibly even to sustain the level of operation recently achieved.

It is hard at the moment to see how a measure of retrenchment can be avoided. Costs continue to rise. Income will surely be harder to come by. Competition for federal funds will become more intense at a time when science and universities are both declining in public favor. There are additional grounds for foreboding in the fact that recent occurrences on our campuses have raised questions in the minds of perceptive potential private donors about the value and promise of our efforts. Add the uncertainties occasioned by the Vietnam War, by impending legislation, the general state of the economy, the declining market, the enormous and increasing needs of many other competing good causes, public and private worry, and it appears almost certain that the years immediately ahead will be more difficult financially for higher education in this country than any we have experienced for a long time.

BUT not everything on Harvard's financial front last year was gloomy. Giving to the University continued at a high rate and several of the alumni funds- most encouragingly, the Fund for the College- reached new highs. We had more money throughout the University to help students than ever before, more than $17 million, which does not include large sums in job opportunities and outside aids not accounted for on our books. The total amount available to students in the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences alone for example, was nearly $10 million.

Several efforts to raise new capital funds for the University came to happy and successful conclusions. The campaign to raise $12 million for the Graduate School of Design, so skillfully and devotedly guided from its inception by John L. Locb '24, continued on a selective basis after termination of the major effort in June 1968 and has now met and exceeded the goal originally set. In the course of this post-campaign drive the additional funds were found to meet the enlarged costs of Gund Hall which had increased in the interval considerably beyond the initial estimate. Similarly the attempt to raise a Sesquicentennial Fund of $15 million in new capital for the Law School, relentlessly advanced by its hard-driving National Chairman, Robert Amory Jr. '36. LLB '38, through the efforts of some 1800 alumni workers has now exceeded its goal in cash and pledges. It is our understanding that this is the largest capital sum ever raised for any law school. The added funds have made possible two new buildings providing much-needed additional space for classrooms, offices and library. Significant additional financial support will also be provided for both faculty salaries and student aids.

Spcial mention must also be made of the extraordinary advances in the financial well-being of the Graduate School of Business Administration achieved during George P. Baker's dean-ship, in no small measure because of the Dean's personal efforts. Four more endowed chairs were added last year, another last month, bringing to 35 the present total of such chairs at this school- 22 of them added during Dean Baker's relatively brief administration. The endowment of the School, which passed the $25 million mark last year, has nearly doubled during these years. Two substantial new fellowship funds were added last year. Not less worthy of note- and especially encouraging- are the facts that the Associates Program provided a new high of $850,000 in annual support, and the Business School Fund passed the million-dollar mark in annual giving. It is believed that this is the first graduate school fund in the country to have achieved such a goal. Equally impressive are the new physical facilities, commented on in earlier reports, some of them still scarcely begun, which have been acquired during Dean Baker's administration. The mark he has made on the Business School both in his long career as teacher and as dean has been outstanding.

So the year had good features as well as discouraging ones. Students, faculty, administrative officers- even members of the Governing Boards- all of us, if for different reasons, were subject to sharp criticism from one quarter or another during the past year. Some of this was undoubtedly merited; much of it certainly was not. The basic causes of our troubles, I am convinced, lie in external difficulties which are larger than Harvard and outside our immediate control. But even if this is true, it does not absolve us from responsibility for our posture before them, nor permit us, retreating into defeatism, to allow ourselves to be victimized by them. I hope that in this perplexing period of widespread unrest all those who truly care about Harvard will now come together to enable this great institution once again to provide an example of courage, concern and sanity in a troubled world.

May I also before closing address a word to the alumni about the present undergraduates who will in time be succeeding to our places? Despite the extremely unrepresentative impression given by a few self-righteous zealots among them, the great majority care deeply and sensibly about Harvard and respect her achievement and her aims and tradition, and very much want to become part of them. But they are rightly skeptical of glib references to past history and insist that the University live up more closely to its best purposes and potential. Like their contemporaries in many places, they are angered at the shabbiness and shortcomings which mar our national life, and feel deeply that in this perspective Harvard, and their being at Harvard, should somehow make a difference- should mean something, something different and better. I do not see how anyone- older or younger- can find fault with this. Most of Harvard's present undergraduates are thoughtful and concerned individuals who are insisting only that neither they nor Harvard can ignore nor seek to escape social responsibility. To some their style may at times appear distasteful, but their aim is clearly very much what we all desire and expect from Harvard.

I have tried in this report to suggest the increasing lively concern within the University for the best way to put knowledge to work for social and moral ends. What our undergraduate and other students want- what we all want- is an education which will insure that this current and ongoing concern can now be met more effectively. If we are to meet this commendable expectation, all of us- students, faculty, administrative officers, members of the Governing Boards, alumni,- must now work more diligently to channel into constructive advance the latent energy and fundamental goodwill which motivated so many Harvard people during this past year of stress and turbulence.

IN closing I would like to pay special tribute to a number of Harvard officers who retired at the end of the academic year from the University's active service. Chief among them is Paul Herman Buck, Professor of History, Dean of the Faculty and Provost in the Connate administration, University Professor and Director of the University Library in the Pusey administration. He is an admired friend, colleague and teacher, a fine scholar-educator, an extraordinarily talented administrator. Certainly few Harvard men have worked harder or more devotedly for their university than Paul H. Buck.

Also leaving the University's active service is Jose Luis Sert, for sixteen years Professor of Architecture and Dean of the Faculty of Design, in this period also planning consultant to the University and architect of some of its most attractive and useful recent buildings. Also among the group retiring are Edward S. Mason, Lamont University Professor and former Dean of the Faculty of Public Administration, who allowed himself to be drafted as Acting Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences during Dean Ford's illness last spring. This distinguished economist has been one of the most illustrious Harvard men of his time. After twenty busy and fruitful years James R. Reynolds '23 steps down as Assistant to the President for Development, as does John H. Van Vleck, Hallis Professor of Mathematics and former Dean of the Division of Engineering and Applied Physics. Among those in the group retiring is Philip A. Putnam, Associate Librarian of the Law Library, who served the School for half a century. Helped by Mr. Putnam's long term of service, the total of man years devoted to the University's welfare by this year's group of retiring officers must surely break some kind of record. Harvard's gratitude to these and others leaving the University's service is beyond measure.

My sad annual duty is to record the names of members of our society whose deaths occurred during the calendar year. Among the alumni and friends of the University on this list is Mildred Barnes Bliss, Member of the Board of Advisors of Dumbarton Oaks (and widow of Robert Woods Bliss '00, Art.D. '51, a former Overseer), who with her husband donated to the Trustees for Harvard University the Byzantine and pre-Columbian Collections, libraries, houses, gardens and land comprising the Dumbarton Oaks Research Library and Collection in Washington, D.C. Mrs. Bliss died on January 17, 1969, and is buried beside her husband in the Garden which was her creation and her lifelong love. Death also took five former Overseers- John Mason Brown, Overseer 1949-55, who died March 16, 1969; Edward Waldo Forbes, Overseer 1945-51, who died March 11, 1969 (see below); William Appleton Lawrence, Overseer 1949-55, who died December 21, 1968; Harrison Tweed, Overseer 1950-56, and president of the Alumni Association 1948-49, who died June 16, 1969; and Francis Lee Higginson, Overseer 1916-22, who died July 14, 1969.

To be noted, in addition, is the death on March 31, 1969, of Wilbur Joseph Bender, former Dean of Admissions and Dean of Harvard College, who together with Fred Lee Glimp, also former Dean of Admissions (the latter retired as Dean of the College as of September 1, 1969) did so much to reform and restyle Harvard's admission practices. These two men had a profound and beneficial effect on Harvard College in their time.

January 12, 1970