Good-bye, John

THE FACULTY WAS treated last week to the curtain performance of an always engaging show--John Dunlop in action at a Faculty meeting. As Faculty members and observers ambled into the University Hall Faculty meeting room, they saw the former Dean seated in his usual position at the right of President Bok, trading quips with passers-by and periodically bursting into fits of laughter, always casting a canny eye about the room to reassure himself that everything in his Faculty was in order.

The start of the meeting never deters Dunlop from continuing his performance. While Bok plays the somber straight man, next to him Dunlop slouches in his chair, scowls disdainfully in the direction of his ever diminishing number of adversaries, only to jerk upright in paroxysms of laughter when his side scores a point. At a meeting last fall, he and Bok disagreed over a bit of financial minutia, and when evidence corroborating his position came forth from the audience, he lurched forward chuckling, his finger waggling at the somewhat taken aback Bok. Some observers swore they detected him stick out his tongue at the President.

With his departure to Washington, Harvard has lost its most colorful and free-wheeling figure. Dunlop was no saint, but he had a certain appealing straight-forward way of conducting business. In the middle of propounding some outrageously conservative policy or point of view, he would disarm his listeners by twisting his rubbery features into an impish grin, leaving them wondering whether he was actually as conservative as all that.

Even his much-publicized arrogance had its engaging aspect. He dropped names so often that floors threatened to collapse under their collective weight, but always with a pixie-ish wink that undermined the gravity of his statements and reduced them almost to an acknowledged selfparody. He bandied about words like power, influence, hiring and firing, always with himself on the business end of the proposition, yet his flamboyant style seemed to belie the cold calculation of his rhetoric.

Yet the biggest mistake many of Dunlop's adversaries made was not to take him seriously. He took over a splintered Faculty in 1970 and in the next several years skillfully knit the deeply-rooted divisions back together, sending independent-minded reformers either into disarray or scurrying for the center. By the end of his term, he had elicited a measure of respect from all segments of a Faculty that had deeply distrusted his predecessor, Franklin L. Ford. He restored a certain reverence for his office that had been absent for some time. Even his opponents on the Faculty capitulated out of respect for his skillfull blending of energy, manipulation and unorthodoxy.

DUNLOP'S SUCCESS in presiding over his Faculty is the more remarkable considering the time he spent moonlighting in Washington. He would tirelessly keep matters in University Hall under control during the week, and then, almost effortlessly, wing his way to the nation's capitol to conduct mysterious business with the building trades unions. He often scheduled appointments before six in the morning, and seemingly had twice the energy of men half his age.

All of this doesn't mean that Dunlop is some paragon of virtue. His conservative stands on questions like University discipline, the Afro-American Studies Department and graduate student rights did much to undermine the halting progress being made at Harvard in the late sixties. His positions were undoubtedly no more reactionary than those his colleagues in the Administration or the Faculty, but his talent at translating them into reality made him a more effective roadblock to progress.

Dunlop's vision of a corporate society in which disputes between interest groups are settled by agreements between their leaders may have endeared him to the nation's business and union barons, but he hardly helped advance America's working people towards a humane society of personal worth and participation. He speaks often of his friendly relations with working people, but, in reality, his archaic political views and patronizing attitude toward workers means they will not have an ally on the Cost of Living Council. George Meany may regard our former dean highly, but to steel and automobile workers he is just another labor bureaucrat.

Still, there is some reason to regret Dunlop's departure. His permanent successor is likely to be at least equally as committed to impeding progress, and lacking Dunlop's style, will become yet another of the gray bureaucrats who predominate around here. Dunlop at least has a sense of commitment to match his engaging personality: his expedient moves channel events toward goals he values sincerely and highly. Most of us accurately viewed him as an enemy, but he at least was an adversary we could simultaneously chuckle at and respect even as we repudiated most of what he stood for.