A Matter of Conscience

"What is the price-curran, of an honest man and patriot today? They hesitate and they regret, and sometimes they petition, but they do nothing in earnest and with effect. They will wait, well disposed, for others to remedy the evil, that they may no longer have it to regret. At most they will give only a cheap vote...to the right, as it goes by them...

It is not a man's duty, as a matter of course, to devote himself to the eradication of any, even the most enormous wrong...but it is his duty, at least, to wash his hands of it, and, if he gave it no thought longer, not to give it practically his support." Henry David Thoreau, Civil Disobedience

PRESIDENT BOK has recently concluded that nothing the University can do will help to eradicate apartheid in South Africa. while his position is debatable, Bok should view the University's further actions as, at least, a matter of conscience.

At the open meeting with President Bok on Thursday night, Bok emphasized the decentralization of decision-making at Harvard, Universities, he said are "not hierarchical like armies. Power is shared widely by varying groups." He cited how budget priorities are set and tenured faculty selected as examples of this. The President, however, did not mention the unchecked power of the Harvard Corporation--which he heads--to invest Harvard's endowment. When it comes to investment policy, the Corporation does not share its power, it hoards it. Thomas Gould, a professor of classics at Yale, observed this same phenomenon in a different context.

Historically and logically the business of the administration is to take some of the clerical duties off the hands of the faculty; to do whatever is necessary to preserve the university both from financial worries and from intrusions of religious bigotry or political power; and to create a community where excellence of any sort is recognized and encouraged.

In the background of the recent changes there is a vicious metaphor at work according to which a university is like a business: this makes the administration the management, the faculty the employees and the students the customers. The metaphor...elevates the administration from their rightful place as servants and protectors of the faculty to the position of their judges and overseers.

THIS metaphor is at work in this University. The Corporation has gone beyond merely protecting Harvard from financial imprudence. President Bok generously states in his first letter that his opinions "are not the official views of the University." His statement is true. Bok may speak as an individual trying "to think through and resolve a difficult and important set of problems," but he acts as the head of the Corporation. He has effectively set himself up as the arbiter of moral truth for the University on this issue.

President Bok writes that Harvard's first duty is to protect the institution. But this University--through the Corporation--has another identity, quite apart from its academic nature. Harvard is also an investor, and cannot rationalize its ethical responsibilities as an investor by trumpeting the importance of the institution itself.

At the conclusion of his second letter, Bok gives three reasons which condescendingly belittle the movement to divest Harvard of its holding in American companies operating in South Africa, as "an extraordinary proposition that would not receive serious consideration were it not for the passions that are so understandably aroused by apartheid and all its attendant injustices."

He contends first that divestiture is "legally questionable. "But this University has never before made a practice of deferring to the opinion of the attorney general of Oregon on legal questions of such importance. For instance, Harvard filed a friend of the court brief in the Bakke case.

Next, Bok rationalizes that divestiture is "widely disputed in its merits," as though disagreement about what to do avers the investor's responsibility to do something. The essence of ethical behavior lies in making choices among difficult courses of action. Bok might counter that since there is disagreement within the academic community, choosing one course of action over another might threaten academic freedom. In the first place, his underlying assumption--that even if the seven men of the Corporation make that decision for the community, we will somehow avoid the difficulty--is contradictory on its face. And second, the issues of investor responsibility and academic freedom are separate: making responsible choices as an investor would not jeopordize academic liberty.

Bok finally argues that divestiture would be "very likely to prove ineffective in achieving its objectives." This is the most disturbing aspect of our President's position. Many of us arrived here believing that one does what is right even if the results of doing so are unclear. No one would contend that Harvard alone can end apartheid or force corporate withdrawal from South Africa--the University simply does not control a large enough share of the stock of any single corporation--neither do all but a handful of powerful shareholders. But it is not Harvard's moral obligation to end apartheid; it is Harvard's moral obligation to terminate its support of a system it believes is wrong.

IN THE words of the late Robert F. Kennedy.

Few will have the greatness to bend history itself, but it is from numberless, diverse acts of courage that human history is shaped. Each time a man stands for an ideal...he sends forth a tiny ripple of hope, and crossing each other from a million different centers of energy and daring these ripples build a current that can sweep down the mightiest walls of oppression.

President Bok himself maintains that "the way in which a university addresses these questions and the answers that it gives are inescapably part of the moral education it imparts to students." If what he says is true, then the President's real message to the students of Harvard is that small acts of moral daring are, at times like this, futile. When he tells us that we are "naive" and "must all be linked in indirect and innumerable ways to the wrongs of the world--through the goods we buy, the taxes we pay, the services we use, the investments we make," he is teaching us to have what Lawrence Goodwin, professor of history at Duke, called "grace in the face of corruption." Bok has told us that there must be an unavoidable conflict between what we believe and what we do. At the deepest level, our President has counseled despair.