GSD Panel Rejects 'Remedial Action' For Former Faculty Member Hartman

THE HARTMAN CASE: 1970-1976

June 1970--With his appointment as assistant professor of City Planning about to expire, Chester W. Hartman '57 formally requests a review of the decision not to rehire him, charging that his academic freedom has been violated.

June 1972--After two years of dispute with Hartman over a review mechanism, the GSD faculty names an investigatory panel of five non-GSD professors.

October 21, 1975--The Hartman Review Committee's report, distributed in September, is referred to the GSD's Academic Policy Committee.

May 26, 1976--The GSD faculty is scheduled to debate the policy committee's report, completed in late April.

A faculty panel at the Graduate School of Design has recommended that the GSD faculty take no "remedial action" toward Chester W. Hartman '58, a former assistant professor of City Planning whose charges that the school did not rehire him for personal and political reasons remain unresolved after six years of haggling and investigation.

The GSD's Academic Policy Committee, which completed its 32-page report in late April and is now circulating it confidentially to principals in the case, rejects Hartman's assertion that his academic freedom was violated and concludes that the Department of City and Regional Planning had "sufficient legitimate grounds" for not renewing the outspoken junior faculty member's appointment.

The GSD faculty will consider the panel's recommendations in a special meeting May 26, seven months after it asked the five-member policy panel to review the just-released 300-page report of an ad hoc University committee that has studied Hartman's charges for over three years.

First Non-Hiring Study

The report of this University panel--known as the Hartman Review Committee--represented Harvard's first attempt to systematically study a non-hiring case. It examined a junior faculty member's right to criticize his tenured colleagues, the role of "subjective" elements in hiring decisions, and the obligations of a department to grant "due process" to those it considers for non-tenured positions.

While the first review committee reported that it was "not prepared to assert" that Hartman's academic freedom had been abridged, it also found that Hartman had "legitimate" procedural and substantive grievances.

The review committee criticized several administrators and faculty involved in the 1969 decision not to rehire Hartman. Its report detailed the school's reliance on "grossly inadequate" and "execrable" procedures for considering reappointments, incompetence in the Department, a "failure of administrative oversight," "the intrusion of subjective elements" into the GSD decision, and a "troublesome" role played in the non-reappointment by then-President Nathan M. Pusey '28.

It also attacked the GSD's former dean and several past and present members of its faculty for offering only partial cooperation to its investigation. The review panel reported that "many" of its five members had a "lingering doubt" as to whether the current GSD dean, Maurice D. Kilbridge, was "as candid and forthcoming as he might have been."

The facts and issues of the Hartman case are exceedingly complex, rooted in the student uprisings here in the late sixties and in the power struggles and curriculum disputes at the long-troubled GSD.

Less Critical View

The new report, by the Academic Policy Committee, a copy of which The Crimson has obtained, appears to take a less critical view than the Hartman Review Committee of the GSD's decision not to reappoint Hartman and the limited cooperation received by the Hartman Review Committee.

For example, the first panel reserved its strongest criticism for the GSD professors whom the committee accused of failing to respond to calls for testimony, stating that "they must bear a major part of the responsibility for any inaccuracies or misinterpretations which might have been corrected by further discussion."

And later in its study, the panel wrote: "The review committee takes a very serious view of the failure of members, and former members, of the Faculty of Design to cooperate with a committee established by that Faculty, and hopes that the members of that Faculty will take due note of this fact, and take such action as they deem appropriate."

While the Academic Policy Committee concludes that failure to cooperate fully in investigations is "basically unacceptable" to the faculty, it says it "cannot recommend" that the faculty consider the issue of censure "in the absence of known standards and accepted procedures in this area."

'Incumbent to Come Forward'

However, the report of the Hartman Review Committee stated that "in normal academic practice, as embodied in policy statements of the American Association of University Professors [AAUP], past practice at Harvard, and the legislation establishing the review committee, there is a presumption that, upon the showing of a prima facie case by the aggrieved party, before a duly constituted body, it is incumbent upon those responsible for the decision in question to come forward with a statement of reasons."

The Academic Policy Committee also concludes in its April 27 report that the limited cooperation of GSD officials did not constitute a denial of due process to Hartman. It cites three factors for this statement:

* The "substantial amount" of cooperation and evidence available to the Hartman Review Committee;

* The review panel's "conscientious effort" to collect all relevant evidence although it lacked the ability to compel testimony; and

* A belief on the part of Academic Policy Committee members that "it does not seem that the potentially missing testimony would result in different conclusions."

Similarily, the policy committee labels the actions of President Pusey and Kilbridge after March 1969 as "immaterial" to the decision not to rehire and states that it is "ambiguous" whether or not either of the two tried to influence the decision afterwards.

The new report only touches briefly on Pusey's role, which was one of the most controversial aspects of the Hartman case. The then-University president reportedly viewed Hartman as an "unfortunate example of faculty participation" in the student demonstrations of spring 1969, the review panel's report said, and Hartman became a "symbol of the faculty's distaste" for the protests.

'Troublesome' Pusey Role

While the Hartman Review Committee did not find "credible" Hartman's allegations that Pusey and the Corporation "took action to secure" his release, the panel said it found Pusey's role "troublesome."

The policy committee also does not discuss the first panel's sharp criticism of Kilbridge's review and eventual acceptance in 1969 of the departmental recommendation against rehiring.

The fact that he made such an unusual review and considered adopting special arrangements for it, the first report said, "suggests that he had serious doubts about the judgment of the department, and was aware that the procedures normally used...were seriously deficient by accepted standards of due process."

But, the panel added, Kilbridge declined to initiate special procedures for Hartman's case.

The policy committee says all five of its members believed that "a department acting without personal animosity, reasonably and legitimately [could] conclude, on the facts listed above, that there were other persons who could make a greater potential contribution to the Department."

The Hartman Review Committee, on the other hand, speculated that Hartman might have been rehired "had there been thorough deliberation on the needs of the department and school and on Dr. Hartman's contributions and qualifications, after careful collection of all relevant evidence."

The Good Old Days

The Hartman dispute dates back to 1969, when the assistant professor--then prominent in a reform movement within the Design School and associated with the students who occupied University Hall--was told he would neither be reappointed assistant professor nor promoted to associate professor.

Hartman requested a review of his non-reappointment in June 1970. For the next two years procedural disputes delayed creation of a review committee. In mid-1972, over Hartman's objections, the GSD selected a five-remember investigatory panel of outside faculty.

Hartman's charges center around two allegations:

* That, as states in the review panel's report, "procedural deficiencies in the decision making process precluded fair and adequate consideration of his case on the merits"; and

* That since there was evidence of friction between Hartman and higher-ups in the planning department, the GSD and the University and since he had received "no satisfactory explanation of the decison [not to rehire] in terms of valid academic criteria," then it was a "fair inference that personal and political considerations violative of his rights had played a major role in the decision."

While the review committee's original charge was confined to the second issue--which it labeled academic freedom--the panel also chose to examine the first issue, due process.

Due Process

Among the findings of the Academic Policy panel on the due process issue are the following:

* While appointment procedures used in the planning department in 1969 were "quite informal," Hartman's case "was not treated with greater informality than others at the time."

While this parallels statements in the Hartman Review Committee report, the latter also explored the consequences of the use of procedures it calls "grossly inadequate," "execrable," and "shockingly lax" when measured against standards of the AAUP.

Thus, the first panel wrote, Hartman was denied the "only safeguards one has against the unwarranted influence of subjective considerations." While the panel says it found no evidence to show that personal biases affected the decision, procedural defects "leave the question more open than it ought to be."

* The Academic Policy Committee asserts that "it is clear that the process used by the Department of City and Regional Planning for considering the quality of Dr. Hartman's teaching did not reflect the systematic and thorough process that one would hope to find in a quality institution." The process should have been more careful and the senior faculty "could and should have made themselves better informed," the panel adds.

However, the panel continues, the senior faculty did know that Hartman's teaching interests had shifted to a community organizing focus and that he saw the Urban Field Service (UFS) as academic, not extracurricular.

It then concludes that "while the process of review was neither systematic nor thorough, the Department did have informed grounds pertaining to Dr. Hartman's teaching on which to base a decision."

The review committee last fall appeared to reach a different conclusion on the department's evaluation of Hartman's teaching. Its report said the department undertook "no systematic attempt" to "assess, influence, or even find out precisely" what Hartman was teaching, despite the fact that "teaching performance purportedly was a central concern."

Evidence collected by the review committee also cast doubt on the two major reasons for the non-reappointment that senior faculty in the department have offered--that Hartman's course on housing did not follow traditional lines and that the assistant professor was not upholding his teaching duties.

'Not Clear'

"It is not clear," the panel said, to what extent the senior faculty had "any real appreciation" of what Hartman's course involved, nor did they "adequately express" their concerns to him. In addition, the report supports Hartman's contention that his administrative work as director of the UFS made it difficult for him to carry a normal teaching load.

The report of the policy committee is bluntly critical of the department's consideration of Hartman's scholarly and professional activities: "...while some knowledge of the quality of Dr. Hartman's research may be inferred, there is no evidence showing that a systematic review of Dr. Hartman's research took place."

The policy panel takes a skeptical view of unsolicited evaluations of Hartman sent to the Hartman Review Committee during its deliberations, stating that "these comments were themselves volunteered by persons interested in the case, and also cannot be said to constitute a systematic and balanced 'peer review' of publications."

But the Hartman Review Committee concluded in its report that the letters "suggest that Dr. Hartman's work was good by the standards of the field, though not of top quality even there, but certainly adequate to merit a tenured faculty position by the standards of the City and Regional Planning Department."

The policy panel's review includes several findings on the charge that Hartman's academic freedom was violated:

* Like the review committee, the members of the Academic Policy Committee state that opinions formed in March 1969 among senior faculty in the department were decisive in Hartman's rejection. While Hartman's role in the spring 1969 protests--including an hour-long visit he made to the occupied University Hall--"affected the attitudes of individuals toward him" when a formal decision was being made, according to the review panel's report, both panels agree that Hartman's fate did not change as a result.

* The senior faculty were aware and influenced by Hartman's stand on issues that they felt reflected Hartman's potential contribution to the department and to the GSD. These included not only teaching responsibilities and the role of the UFS but also Hartman's administrative behavior and personal relations with the faculty, which were marked, the panel says, by "continual friction."

'Highly Discretionary'

The policy committee adds that "we do not believe that the doctrine of academic freedom extends so far as to eliminate from consideration, in the highly discretionary process of reappointment," these issues.

The panel also says that "there is little doubt" that Hartman's criticisms of the department "were felt and resented" by the senior faculty. "Indeed," it adds, "it would require almost super-human forebearance for them [the attacks] not to have been so regarded."

However, the panel decided not to ascertain whether personal animosity or other criteria led to the faculty's decision because it believed "this task would be, as a practical matter, impossible.