Harvard, Government Square Off On Access to Confidential Files

Harvard administrators are preparing for a major battle to defend the privacy of confidential information about students and employees contained in Harvard files. The main attacker appears to be the Federal Government.

The first skirmish was this week. The Harvard personnel office refused to open its files to investigators from the Department of Health, Education and Welfare checking compliance with minority group hiring provisions of the Civil Rights Act of 1964.

NEWS ANALYSIS

A University statement yesterday said that while the HEW inspectors demanded to see only the files of salary and wage employees, they claimed they had the legal right to examine "all University records." Among the other records Harvard keeps are student records, faculty records, departmental records, and medical and psychiatric records.

Also this week, the University received a letter from the State Department demanding quarterly reports on the activities of students who have qualified for government funds-such as Fulbright scholarships-for traveling overseas.

And in March, Harvard was informed that its students from Pennsylvania could not qualify for Commonwealth scholarships unless the University supplied the Commonwealth with the names, addresses, and "pertinent facts" of all Pennsylvania students-scholarship or not-involved in University disruptions.

It is highly unlikely Harvard will agree to do so. Radcliffe has already refused.

The HEW inspectors had been at Harvard since early March. John B. Butler, director of Personnel, said his department had been cooperating fully with the HEW officials in supplying all the impersonal data they requested. "Finally, however, they wanted information about specific people and their relation to Harvard," Butler said. "It became a difference of opinion on fundamental issues."

The HEW team offered to send Harvard a letter stating which specific files were needed for their review. Harvard has not yet received the letter, and the investigation has been suspended. If HEW decides Harvard is not "in compliance," the University could conceivably lose over $60 million of Federal funds next year.

Yesterday's statement said, "The University for many years has refused requests for access to faculty, student, and employee files from the FBI, the CIA, Congressional investigation committees, the various services under the Department of Defense and the Bureau of the Budget, among others. At the present time the University is under pressure to reveal student disciplinary information to the National Science Foundation, the State Department, the Justice Department, and the Department of Commerce."