Naming the Hand That Feeds

SOMETIME LAST YEAR Derek Bok decided to take the offensive. After all, why should those noisy radicals from the Southern Africa Solidarity Committee (SASC) get all the attention, while he had to keep his so-meticulously-worked-out, delicately-balanced investment policy to himself and the Corporation Fellows? If Bok was to convince the world that he genuinely cared about ethical issues, he needed a media campaign.

This campaign had to be planned very carefully, though--no direct debates with SASC, mind you, and no need for Bok to think on his feet. He'd tried that crossing the Yard amid hundreds of protestors last year, and all he could do was toss off a "What, Me Worry?" line before University police managed to rescue him from his own students.

And so was born the Bok propaganda offensive: meetings with the House Masters and with the Committee on Housing and Undergraduate Life, speeches to the Faculty and students and, of course, the Harvard Gazette letters. Bok soon came to rely heavily on the letters, which gave him a chance to consult at his leisure with his chief strategist, General Counsel Daniel Steiner '54, before committing himself to any positions. In fact, when asked at an open meeting about his policy on naming buildings after unsavory characters, he could only reply "Read my letter."

The first couple of letters were bad enough, and were analyzed for what they were by several commentators in national newspapers, but Bok's latest salvo--an epistle on the ethical problems of accepting gifts--is the most noncommittal of all. Bok manages to avoid specially referring to the Englehard issue, treats with a few limited hypotheticals to give the appearance of a detailed, clearcut policy, and finally tries to shift the burden of his policy-making to students.

HE BEGINS by characterizing students as self-interested, impulsive, and impractical in their demands--if the university were a person, one might liken these students to the id. Faculty members, who represent the weight of tradition, the moral conscience, constitute the superego. Outside the Harvard gates and the sheltered ivy-covered buildings, lies Reality, in the shape of "Questionable" donors and unethical corporations, inflation and money worries. And heroically balancing all three, taking the heat from the id, the guilt trip from the superego, the pressure and threats of reality, are Bok and his assistant wise-men, valiantly trying to do the best they can for the interests of the University.

This attitude is dangerous and unacceptable. University administrators are supposed to take the day-to-day tasks off the hands of the faculty and students, who will then have time to pursue their intellectual endeavors; the administration is to rule only by the consent of those it is supposed to serve. Instead, Bok's logic--clearly evinced by his refusal to respond to the stock divestiture issue--gives the administration and Corporation a free hand to rule in what they decide is in the general interest, even if many concerned members of the University disagree. Bok answers to no one but God.

After deprecating the students and faculty--with only an ephemeral warning about insensitive administrators--the letter moves to the specific problems of defining the conditions under which gifts will be rejected. The most obvious condition, he states, is when a donor "improperly restricts" academic freedom by insisting on choosing who shall be appointed to his endowed chair, or what sorts of doctrines his money shall be used to support. Harvard rejects donations of that sort, Bok says. If a donor wished to "promote the value of the free market," for instance, the money would be turned down. Curiously enough, the University's proposal for the ARCO Forum said something like it was for "the encouragement of the free energy, free enterprise system."

The next category considered is titled, rather ominously, "Controversial Donors." These are people "who are said to have earned then money by immoral means or to have acted in ways that conflict with strongly held values in the community." Bok notes that Harvard has historically taken such money and looked the other way, which presumably is an argument for Harvard continuing to do so. Besides, if Harvard were to refuse one such gift, he implies, it would have to consider doing the same to all unsavory gifts, and if it took one and not another, it would commit the great sin of inconsistency. Better to be consistently amoral.

What Bok calls "tainted money" can do a lot of good, admittedly, and it would be hard to argue that the University shouldn't take money from anyone of lesser moral standards than Harvard itself. Bok draws the line at accepting stolen goods, however. The only thing Bok overlooks is that there are plenty of legal ways to steal a fortune.

EVEN THE WORST money, however, can provide good services: it pays for Rhodes and Fulbright Scholarships and financial aid for poorer students. So before you protest, Bok tells us, remember that you may be implicated in this evil, too. The message implicit in all this is that since you inevitably get a little dirt on your hands while walking through the garden, you might as well throw youself completely into the mud. Maybe so, President Bok, but do we have to wallow in it so much?

Finally Bok reaches the crucial question. You can take someone's money and use it for good--but must you honor him in return? If so, isn't he just buying legitimacy and using Harvard for his own ends? "Those who wish to drive this point home can easily conjure up grotesque cases to support their position," Bok writes, again characterizing his student and faculty critics as innocents or fanatics who just won't be reasonable. "But no university could accept a Hitler Collection of Judaica or a Vorster Center for Racial Justice or a Capone Institute of Criminology." Or an Engelhard Library of Public Affairs? Where does Bok draw the line between an acceptable and an unacceptable donor?

The line becomes even fuzzier when Bok's theory addresses the question of gifts intended to attract "favorable publicity to improve a donor's image." On the one hand, Bok proudly points out he once turned down a gift from the Papadopoulos regime which seemed designed to gain the goodwill of Greek-Americans. On the other hand, Steiner admitted that Harvard had accepted the Atlantic Richfield Company's offer to build a public affairs forum, even though "I'm sure ARCO hoped (the naming of the Forum) could have some favorable impact on its negative public image." True, ARCO has been repeatedly charged with price-fixing and other "unethical" behavior; but, says Bok, "It's a little hard to make value judgements--to decide how deliberately the law was violated, or whether they knew about the law--before you accept a gift." Alas, Mr. President, ignorance of the law is not an excuse.

If Harvard knows in advance that a donor's actions are completely in conflict with University values, continues Bok, it should not take the money. Harvard should therefore strive to ignore as much as it can about the backgrounds of its potential donors, or so Bok seems to argue: "I am not yet persuaded that Harvard should have an obligation to investigate each donor and impose detailed moral standards." Once Harvard has accepted a gift, he protests, it should not renege on its agreement, because this "may inflict pain on relatives..." The pain inflicted on the donor's victims, of course, doesn't count as much: the oppressed rarely endow chairs.

Earlier this year, Bok told students who wanted Harvard to initiate anti-apartheid shareholder resolutions to go do it themselves; now Bok is again abdicating his ethical duties. "If there are those who believe that stricter guidelines are needed," challenges Bok, "let them propose clear and consistent standards and develop practical means for their enforcement."

WHAT THIS ALL boils down to is boldfaced sophistry, a beautifully-embroidered defense of amorality, a well-fabricated philosophy of avoiding moral choices wherever possible. This ostrich-like posture is exalted to the high plane of statesmanship: Everyone wants him to do different things, Bok seems to say, so he'll do nothing at all. He'll take Engelhard's money and name the damned library after him--then the deed will be done and everybody will have to look to the future. And if critics ask to examine all future gifts to prevent further Engelhards, Bok answers that an overall policy is too hard to work out, and a case-by-case method is inconsistent and arbitrary.

Whether he knows it or not, this policy removes all of Bok's ethical problems: How can a donor's life and actions possibly be "in plain conflict with the values and ideals of the institution," when Harvard clearly has no values except economic survival?