Cambridge Academics Waver on McGovern

WHILE MANY HARVARD and MIT professors who traditionally back Democratic candidates are now supporting the McGovern-Shriver ticket, there seems to be a substantial number who are sitting on that fence.

Seymour Martin Lipset, professor of Government and Social Relations, formerly an active supporter of democratic socialist policies, is not supporting McGovern and is officially uncommitted.

Lipset has described McGovern's supporters in the University community as "mushhead intellectuals."

"They are the types of people who can get goals but don't really have the hardheadedness to formulate plans to achieve them," he said last week.

He was also wary of McGovern's proposed reduction in the Defense budget. "If we cutdown our production of conventional weapons in the way that he wants to," Lipset argued, we will be placed in the situation of either having to back down or use nuclear weapons if we have a confrontation with the communists in the Mideast or in Asia. McGovern's proposals would bring us one step closer to World War III."

Lipset, who is spending this year at the Center for Advanced Behavioral Research in Palo Alto. Calif., is equally disturbed about McGovern's original base of support. "McGovern's early supporters were attracted to him over the sex business, abortion, and marijuana legalization. Essentially his campaign in the early primaries was like a small third party movement," he said. "Now with McGovern retreating from his early positions, he's lost much of his early backing plus having trouble getting the traditional elements in the Democratic party to support him."

At a meeting of the American Political Science Association last week, Lipset presented data he had collected on the percentage of college professors supporting President Nixon and McGovern. He stated that 46 per cent were backing McGovern and 43 per cent were supporting Nixon, with the rest undecided.

Daniel P. Moynihan, professor of Education and Urban Politics, who played a major role in John F. Kennedy's victory in New York State in 1960, wrote an article in the September 1 issue of Life magazine on how President Nixon views his second term in office.

Moynihan, who was an advisor in the Nixon Administration as well as in those of Kennedy and Johnson, has drawn fire from both columnists and fellow Harvard professors, who contend that Moynihan glorified Nixon and that Moynihan made poor arguments to justify his contentions.

Joseph Kraft, in a syndicated column appearing in The Boston Globe on September 11, charged that Moynihan was repeating "utter nonsense" in hope of "finding favor" with the White House. He wrote that Moynihan did not use valid evidence to prove his assertion that Nixon was against quotas when Moynihan cited the large number of Jews with high Administration posts.

James Wechsler, a columnist in. The New York Post, charged in an August 30 article that Moynihan interchanged his own thoughts for Nixon's specifically when Moynihan wrote that Nixon is dreaming "of a new coalition not built on fears, but built on common hopes. He sees as its unifying principle not total agreement or even substantial agreement about the particulars of program and policy, but rather recognition of the need for civility in working out ways to approach the great goals of the society. As he sees it, the Stevensonian concept of civility is accessible equally to persons north, west, south, east, black, white, yellow, young, old."

Wechsler also questioned Moynihan's article because it contained no direct quotes from the President.

Martin Kilson, professor of Government, in a letter to Life dated September 10 charged that "Moynihan's equation of the new (second) term Nixon with the late Adlai Stevenson is one of the most extraordinary manipulations of truth for political ends I have seen in some time. Intellectual huckstering has, alas clearly entered a new era."

When asked to comment on these charges last week, Moynihan seemed unmoved. All I did was report what the President had to say. People may not like it, but that's all that I did," he said.

"If people find the reasoning in the articles faulty they are entitled to, but they're not my arguments, their the President's."

Moynihan explained that he had used no direct quotation simply because there is a Presidential rule against the President granting interviews." Of course exceptions are made to the rule, but in this case all that I did was take notes on what the President said," he said.

"I am a registered Democrat in Cambridge and I am not taking an active role in this campaign for anyone."

It is not quite clear what Henry Kissinger's role will be in the upcoming campaign, but one thing is sure: the Committee to re-Elect the President isn't telling.

Jon Schumley, director of public affairs for the committee, said Kissinger's role "will be" to chair the National Security Council. We have no schedule for him and we don't anticipate his making any appearances."

He refused to comment on whether Kissinger would be used to help raise funds at gatherings of wealthy Jews, as he did during the summer.

Professors on the Democratic side are more active.

Abram J. Chayes, professor of Law, may be the most active of McGovern's Harvard advisors. He said last week he has been working full time on the campaign since the convention. Dubbed by many people the "Secretary of State" or the "Kissinger" of McGovern's advisers, Chayes is overseeing almost all of the Democratic presidential coatender's foreign policy research.

Chayes has organized about 90 professors into nine task forces to study all areas of the world and topics such as development, the U.N. and financial affairs. "A lot of people wanted to be involved in the campaign and this is a good way to put their talents to use," Chayes said last week.

The Eastern Liberal Establishment seems to be highly represented in the group. Chayes said most of the professors are from the East Coast and about one-fourth are from the Boston area.

"A lot of people have objected to the geographical concentration and thought we should spread out to get different points of view," Chayes said. But he added that the great number of academicians from the area was natural: "There is a population concentration here, there is an academic concentration here, and here are the people I know and have confidence in."

Chayes recently went on a two week fact-finding mission for McGovern in Western Europe and Israel, where he said he got "royal treatment." He said the Israelis he talked to--including Prime Minister Golda Meir, Foreign Minister Abba Eban, and Defense Minister Moshe Dayan--had none of the apprehensions about McGovern's position on Israel that newspapers report are sending many American Jews to the Nixon camp.

Chayes said most of his work for the campaign is behind him and the task force reports on foreign policy should be done soon.

Edwin Kuh, professor of Economics at MIT and Stanley Surrey, Smith professor of Law were instrumental in the drafting of McGovern's revised economic proposals. Paul Samuelson, a colleague of Kuh's worked with him on the draft, but has not been as active in this campaign as he had been in the past for Democratic candidates. "I'm working on the ninth revision of my textbook now no I really don't have the time to be as active as I was for Jack Kennedy," Samuelson said. "I'll probably confine my activities to talking to financial groups to reassure them about McGovern's policies."

Marc Roberts, assistant professor of Economics, has been working with McGovern since last February. Before the New Hampshire primary, Roberts drafted position papers on the environment and on corporate responsibility. He subsequently went to California before the primary, to work on developing an alternative peacetime budget for the state. After the "primaries, Roberts went to Washington to work on the platform and assisted in drafting planks on the environment and corporate responsibility.

Roberts is now working on another white paper for McGovern on the environment.

While not directly connected with preparing McGovern's economics program, Roberts periodically offered advice to McGovern aides working on revising the plan. In an interview last week, Roberts explained why it took so long to revise McGovern's original tax reform plan which came under attack in the middle of May and was not revised until the end of August.

"In order to do this we had to run a computer simulation of the entire economy which takes a good deal of time," he explained. "In addition we had to weigh the political question of how large a tax base we want to use. Each time McGovern's political advisers made a change, we had to do a new simulation."