Pusey's Last Annual Report to Overseers Says Time 'Propitious' for New President

President Nathan M. Pusey, in his 18th and final Annual Report, told the Board of Overseers, "The advances made [during 1969-70] were little short of remarkable in both number and quality in view of the almost continuous disruption or threat of disruption."

The past year, he said, "was filled with anxiety during its passage. Yet now in retrospect it appears to have been a constructive period when attitudes began to alter, and restorative forces reasserted themselves."

Pusey-who is retiring from the University next summer to become President of the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation-begins his 21-page report with a two-page catalogue of last year's various political demonstrations and actions, "an almost unbroken series of efforts by various dissident groups to create campus disturbances."

Of the catalogue-which begins and ends with attacks on the Center for International Affairs (CFIA)-Pusey said, "It is a disgraceful story insofar as it is owed to members of a generation professing superior insight, heightened sensitivity, and lively human concern; but there it is for the record."

'Propitious Point'

Despite these events, however, and "despite ominous clouds cast by financial stringency"-1969-70 was the first year of the Pusey administration when the University did not operate safely in the black-"this is a propitious point for a new President to take over," Pusey said.

One encouraging factor, he said, was that "the more reprehensible acts appear to have been, if not entirely, at least very largely non-Harvard."

"Even more heartening is the fact that the marches on Shannon Hall were turned back, not by the few University police on hand at the time, but rather by other aroused students-a very large number of them freshmen-who were resolved to prevent such senseless activity discreditable to all young," Pusey said.

"In view of the way standards of acceptable behavior in academic communities had been declining for several years there was no reason to expect it," he added.

Pusey commended the Committee of Rights and Responsibilities-attacked throughout the year by students as an instrument of political repression-as having "functioned courageously, discerningly, and effectively."

If Faculty and students had not "consented to perform this distasteful but very necessary chore ... and exercised their judgment with fairness and firmness, the University could hardly have avoided crippling anarchy," he said.

As part of the University's "changing attitude"-"the reawakening concern for teaching and research, and for respectful and informed communication that began to show itself"-Pusey cited the defeat by the Faculty last June of a proposal to restructure the 1970 fall academic calenday to make a place for political activity.

"The war was not within the area of a Faculty's corporate concern or competence and was therefore not a matter on which an educational institution as such should express an opinion," Pusey said.

"But some members of the faculties," he added, "particularly the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, who had been trying unsuccessfully for more than a year to put the University on record in opposition to the war, were unwilling to accept this position; and, winning increased support in an excited moment, finally succeeded in October 1969 in getting the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to express a judgment against the war ... Since it was very difficult to see what such action had to do with either teaching or research, it was especially heartening when the very different vote of last June passed by a majority of more than four to one."

More constructively, Pusey said, the recent disturbances occasioned a University-wide reexamination of governance currently proceeding, and provoked several individual efforts at reappraisal and reorganization in a number of the separate faculties.

'Poorly Conceived'

"Last summer," Pusey said, "in reading through the minutes of this Faculty held during the past two years, I was repeatedly struck by instances when in excited moments rather poorly conceived motions introduced from the floor achieved passage with very little discussion ...

"In excited debates moderate voices carried very little persuasion. A learned university faculty, when aroused, can be no less impatient and unwise than any other large, directly representative assembly ... Unless a faculty eschews militancy, exhibits prudence and practices restraint the very concept of a university can be put in jeopardy."

On the positive side, Pusey noted the "great deal of administrative attention devoted last year to the effort to increase employment opportunities for workers from minority backgrounds within the University and on our construction projects."

Helping Our Neighbors

In addition, he said, "The University is involved in a new, costly and time-consuming housing program ... recognizing a wider responsibility to help our neighbors."

Pusey mentioned all the deans who have served during his Administration-he became President in 1953-saying, "Where else could one recruit an equal array of talent to guide the multiform efforts of an institution which has now clearly become one of the great intellectual centers of the world?"

Of Derek C. Bok-announced last week as Pusey's successor and currently dean of the Law School-Pusey said, "I could not be happier for myself or for the University in the choice they and you have made."