Marching to a Fast Drummer

For someone with a clear sense of direction. Guy Molyneux '81-4 has championed a series of fairly disparate campus movements. From the 1978 torchlight march protesting Harvard's investments in companies that do business in South Africa, to the boycott of a cap and gown manufacturer over a union dispute, to the condemnation of Arnold C. Harberger's appointment as head of the Harvard Institute of International Development, to the formation of the progressive "Coop Group." Molyneux has had a hand in nearly every even vaguely leftist student campaign in his almost five years in Cambridge.

But for Guy Molyneux, the ideological connection among these protests, demonstrations, unionization movements, conferences and campaigns runs deep. "Most of these problems are tied to great concentrations of wealth and hence power," he begins, retelling a familiar story.

He tells you immediately he's a democratic socialist, committed to equality and democracy--principles he says he tries to apply to his activities both on and off campus. He took last year off to work for the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee (DSOC) in Boston, and now serves as the national organizational secretary of its youth section.

Although he works for fashionable causes such as El Salvador and divestment, the Delmar, N.Y. native defies a radi-chic characterization. His parents both teach high school and Guy, a public school graduate, has always worked as part of his financial aid package; he now holds down a job as assistant to the publisher at Working Papers, a progressive bi-monthly political magazine.

The elder Molyneuxs instilled in their only son the values they grew up with. Guy calls his mother a "red diaper baby" and his father is active in the local teachers' union. For Guy, too, labor activity has provided a common thread of interest. He spent much of freshman year and a summer in Albany working on union issues. He helped organize the 1978-79 boycott of J.P. Stevens, a southern textile company with a history of anti-union activity. A concern for labor also led Molyneux to spearhead a drive to remove Cotrell and Leonard caps and gowns from the Coop's shelves.

Molyneux says he is happiest about the Cotrell and Leonard protest, because it drew support from a large majority of the senior class. The company went before the National Labor Relations Board on charges of anti-union activity, and later went out of business as a result. Some Coop board members have criticized the student protest because it eventually cost Cotrell and Leonard workers their jobs, says Molyneux. But of the company he adds. "I'm convinced the world's better off without it. I don't feel I'm responsible for their losing their jobs."

A unionization attempt closer to home--at 1400 Mass Ave --also won Molyneux's support and has him to form the Coop Group, a slate of candidates dedicated to more progressive labor practices and improving services to students. He's institutional in more than cheaper socks and underwear, and in that he says he's succeeded: These's been a real change. Students have access to more information. If the decision made three years ago to open a downtown store were being made now. I don't think there would have been a downtown store."

Even in the age of Reagan, Molyneux remains optimistic. "There is generation of people coming up who will hopefully redefine public debate on certain issues" such as who controls investments and who controls capital. Molyneux says, explaining that one of his primary aims is to raise the political consciousness of those who will become society's leaders. "Despite the '70s being characterized as a period of apathy...I never felt politically marginalized. There was less militancy but I think there was a lot of passive support for the same type of causes."

A close friend calls him "calmly committed" but in strategy sessions and ideological discussions, he earns characterizions from some associates of "hardheaded", "arrogant", and "abrasive". Others suggest he is modest--more interested in promoting his ideas than plugging himself. A facile speaker, Molyneux may smile in conversation, but to make his point forsakes bubbly enthusiasm for the steady gaze and the hard sell.

"He's perceived by those people who know him as a real political operative," who may tend to ride roughshod over a younger colleague's argument, says one political ally. "He's very quick and sometimes people mistake that for arrogance," he adds.

Molyneux concedes, "I would not say that I am personally ideally suited for coalition work," adding, "I tend to be a fairly tense person...On the other hand. I think it's what makes me one of the best political organizers on campus--once I take something on it gets done."

Friends say he releases that tension by partying--and Molyneux admits this activities cut into academic more than social time. He attributes his academic successes (and tutor Joseph Schwartz calls him "one of the most respected students in Social Studies") to Harvard's reading period system, which gives him a chance to catch up.

He is not so enthusiastic about other aspects of the way the University is run: "I do not leave Harvard feeling good about its president or about the University as an institution."

Take, for instance, the divestiture movement. The activist joined the Southern Africa Solidarity Committee (SASC) during the heated months before the torchlight parade through the square that drew over 1000 students and constituted the largest demonstration since the anti-Vietnam movement days. Some heat remains in his tone now when he discusses the student-faculty committee that advises the corporation on its investments: "I don't know how anybody can sit on the ACSR without a certain sense of shame because they are so clearly being used--unless they went on specifically to change the committee."

Molyneux also attacks the notion that the University can remain "neutral" on issues such as divestment of holdings in companies linked with South Africa. And although Harvard claims it has little impact on the actions of other institutions, says Molyneux, President Bok's statements on South Africa and other issues always appear in The New York Times. The Boston Globe and even in the white South African press. "He uses publicity when he refuses student demands, not when Harvard takes one of its few steps to meet its social responsibility."

President Bok's open letters and recent collection of essays on the role of the university "create the impression that Harvard did indeed care about these important issues when in fact it didn't, "says Molyneux, adding that the new book attempts to take ad hoc decisions and justify them within a systematic framework. "Somehow every-time he thinks about a problem he comes to the conclusion that the status quo is right."

Molyneux points to Bok's intervention in the long-running drive for unionization at the Medical School, by signing letters to employees suggesting they refuse to join a union. "I think he has a corporate outlook. He opposed the unionization of his own employees at the med school..That's obviously not neutrality."

He recalls the 1979 protest against naming the Kennedy School Library after Charles W. Engelhard, an American businessman who made much of his fortune through mining interests in South Africa, succeeded just when students would have had to give up for reading period. "But, ultimately there are seven white men sitting on the Corporation and they're going to make the decision, and one students realize they've made the decision, they're not going to keep protesting--and there's no reason they should." He adds that the administration's policy is to oppose whatever student protesters suggest, on the grounds that they don't want to give in to student pressure. He concludes emphatically, "What emerges is a fairly conservative world view which is not neutral at all...He is playing a positively negative role," Molyneux says.

What kind of future does Guy Molyneux see for campus movements. He uses minority groups as example of the increased need for student unity. "The worst aspect of leftist politics on campus" is racial division. Molyneux says. "I don't share the feelings, but unfortunately people haven't sat down and realized white students are growing less susceptible to Black demands." Molyneux says Black students haven't made enough of an effort to break down perceptions of middle class Black students as just as privileged as their white counterparts at Harvard. "I would hope that in the next couple of years white student groups sat down with Blacks and offered to help" bridge that gap.

He hesitates to endorse the student government that recently won student and Faculty approval. "Student government could--potentially--be very important," Molyneux says. "I expect people with my political outlook will run and attempt to gain some seats." Molyneux will not leave the struggle when he finishes his thesis next fall and enters the job market. He plans to work for the same causes, perhaps in the labor movement with a stop at law school along the way. He may also try his hand at electoral politics. "I'm not a purist in the sense that someone has to be a socialist to get my support--there aren't a whole lot of those officials around...I would be willing to work for any candidate I consider to be solidly progressive," he adds, citing Rep. Barney Frank '61 (D-Mass.) and Sen. Edward M. Kennedy '54 (D-Mass.)

Schwartz, a close friend as well as Molyneux's thesis advisor, describes Guy as "on the left wing of the possible." He adds, "He's radical in his vision of what type of society he wants to achieve but he also wants to be effective, I think Guy has demonstrated to people that the strength of moral says commitment to political change leads to the strength of a long-distance runner."

And Molyneux's philon, why clearly applies off as well as on-campus: "You have to decide who has power and you have to bother them."