Pursuing the Lameduck Professor

Ron Gollobin probably meant well. "Are we going to be hearing any more about benign neglect over the next three years, Professor Moynihan?" he asked, and grinned a wide grin for the TV cameras.

He wasn't prepared for what happened.

The post-election euphoria in which Daniel Patrick Moynihan, professor of Government, had been basking all day Wednesday was momentarily shattered there, outside Harvard Hall, and for all Moynihan cared, Gollobin, a reporter for. Boston's Channel 5, could have been Idi Amin.

Moynihan, who had returned to Harvard on the early shuttle from New York on Wednesday after his victory over incumbent James Buckley in the state's senatorial race the night before, got mad.

He shoved Gollobin over to a nearby parked car--without answering the reporter's question--whipped a piece of paper from his briefcase, requested Gollobin's name--the reporter obliged, his face redenning--copied it down meticulously, and, as a crowd of about 100 watched, he began making his way toward his Francis Ave. home in Cambridge.

Moynihan has been trying hard to put "benign neglect" behind him these past seven years. Now, he's about to put Harvard behind him, apparently for good.

But the Senator-elect, whose decision to campaign and teach at Harvard simultaneously this fall drew criticism from both Buckley and from some influential Harvard alumni, didn't get any sleep, he says, the night he was elected--he had to get back to Cambridge.

"It's nice to be back at Harvard," he said Wednesday morning as he entered Harvard Hall to give a lecture in his course, Social Sciences 115, "Social Policy and Social Change" before a group of about 85 students and well-wishers, who applauded when Washington's newest senator-professor walked into the room.

Moynihan scrupulously avoided mention of the previous night's victory in his anecdote-filled, stream-of-consciousness lecture, and yelled loudly, pounding on the table in front of him, when a New York television film crew attempted to enter the classroom.

Among the well-wishers in attendance was James Q. Wilson, Shattuck Professor of Government, who sat in the next-to-last row during Moynihan's lecture--in which he was mentioned several times. Wilson said he came to Moynihan's lecture because he "wanted to congratulate" Moynihan. "I thought I should come here to see him," he said.

Wilson followed Moynihan home after the lecture, in an entourage that included a New York Times reporter who shouted loud obscenities when she became tangled in a camera crew's cables, and an indeterminate number of other correspondents, each clamoring for a word with the Senator-elect.

Moynihan said he will continue to shuttle between New York and Boston "until the end of the lecture system" in January, when his lectures will begin appearing in the Congressional Record.