Seven Seats of Power

If the Harvard Corporation ever wanted to "get" the History Department, it could do it. It could block the department's appointments and refuse to OK a budget with any funding. But it never would.

The Corporation, formally known as the President and Fellows of Harvard College, is Harvard's highest administrative organ--save the largely ceremonial Board of Overseers--but instead of getting involved in the day-to-day affairs of the University, it concentrates on long-range planning and only takes direct responsibility for major financial matters.

In many ways the Corporation is unique among university governing boards. Its members serve for life, it is the smallest board in any major university, and it meets more often than any other. However, most of the University has little contact with it.

The Corporation is often referred to as "The Oldest Self-Perpetuating Body in the Western Hemisphere" because it has continually replenished its ranks without outside interference since 1650, as Seymour Martin Lipset and Samuel Eliot Morrison describe in their histories of Harvard. But during the past 334 years its role within the University has changed considerably. The Corporation has always supervised Harvard's finances, but after 250 years of relatively easy management, the job has become increasingly complex in this century.

The Corporation has also eased away from scholarly matters: in its early days it played a vigorous day-to-day role in the academic administration of the College, but today it only exerts a final check on all but the most extreme issues of teaching and research.

Harvard was founded on October 28, 1636, with a grant of 400 pounds from the Massachusetts legislature, but its governing boards did not take their present form until 14 year later. A year after, the College's founding the first Board of Overseers was appointed with six magistrates and six ministers, and they chose Nathaniel Eaton of Trinity College. Cambridge, and the University of Frankener in the Netherlands, as Harvard's first Master (President). But Eaton did not survive his second year, after he was indicted for assault for nearly bludgeoning his assistant to death with a walnut club. The board fired him.

For the next 12 years the College endured great financial hardship. It did secure a few large donations, most notably John Harvard's, but it also depended on the help of the legislature, which granted Harvard the revenues of the Boston-to-Charleston ferry and a special tax called the College Corne--each New England family was required to donate a peck of wheat for the College's support.

The Overseers of the 1640s also established a precedent which would continue for more than 200 years, they of the College's day to-day affairs Harvard's second president, Henry Dunster, was continually hampered by the Overseers intrusion into mundane administrative decisions and the small budget they allowed him.

At Dunster's urging the legislature redefined the College's government in 1650, establishing the bicameral system that has persisted with only one major modification until today. The Corporation, composed of the president, treasurer, and five Fellows, won primary control over the institution. The Board of Overseers became a supervisory group composed of clergy and local magistrates to represent the community. The Overseers were designed as the higher board, but then as today: they metress frequently and were supposed to cede day-to-day power to the Corporation. Until the boards escaped from the control of the state legislature in 1865, the two continually locked horns over who would actually run the fledgling Harvard.

The Corporation has also eased away from scholarly matters: in its early days it played a vigorous day-to-day role in academic administration of the college, but today it only exerts a final check on all but the most extreme issues of teaching and research.

Their bickering reached a height in the 18th century when professors were frequently hired and fired for their personal beliefs. Harvard would have to wait more than 100 years, until the term of President Charles William Eliot, before the University's hiring policy truly reflected respect for academic freedom.

In this period the Corporation was expanding Harvard into the research and teaching institution we see today, and taking greater interest in the University's finances. But one of Harvard's worst financial crises ever occurred during the American Revolution, when noted patriot John Hancock served as the Corporation's Treasurer.

Hancock, one of Boston's wealthiest merchants, gave generously to his alma mater, and the Corporation rewarded him by naming him treasurer. But Hancock had little taste for the job and spent most of his time travelling on business or political missions, neglecting the University's finances. He failed to collect term bills or pay debts, and complicated matters by carrying the University's financial records on his travels.

On April 11, 1775, President Samuel Langdon sent Hancock a letter threatening to replace him, but the treasurer did not respond. A series of follow-up letters went similarly answered, and the Corporation sent a tutor to look for Hancock, then in hiding during the war. He failed and Hancock remained it office until his death, when he left 16,000 pounds for money he had University accounts and a personal debt to Harvard of 1495 pounds, for money he had unscrupulously borrowed.

For a time the financial situation became so severe that academic requirements were drastically relaxed. On July 18, 1780, a student arrived in Cambridge for the first time and paid his 300 pound tuition. That afternoon he passed oral examinations in seven subjects and was awarded his A.B. degree on the spot.

A recurring theme in the power struggles between the Corporation and the Overseers of the 18th and 19th centuries was the debate over student morality. The more conservative Overseers generally favored greater restrictions on behavior than the Corporation, but they agreed in a few famous examples of student unrest.

The first undergraduate uprising was the famous "butter riot" of 1766. Bad food had been a student complaint since the University's founding, and the rebellion started when Asa Dunbar, grandfather of Henry Thoreau, confronted an administrator and complained. "Behold, our butter stinketh and we cannot eat thereof."

For inciting the ensuing demonstration. Dunbar was demoted by the faculty, but the students rallied behind him and agreed to boycott--breakfast. The Corporation and Overseers conceded that the butter was rotten, but they insisted the students apologize for their insubordination or resign. They apologized.

A second controversy arose after the turn of the century as students began exercising more freedom and spending more time in taverns than at their studies. Concerned, the Corporation successfully petitioned the legislature to draft a law preventing innkeepers from advancing credit to students. And in 1823, 43 of 70 students in the graduating class were expelled for a combination of discipline problems including bonfires in the Yard, cannonballs dropped from windows, strategically placed ink buckets, and class disturbances.

As a result of this great rebellion the Overseers and Corporation agreed on a code of 153 regulations in 13 section, dictating everything from vacations to the requirement that the president submit an annual report to the Overseers.

Since then the governing boards have remained virtually unchanged. The Corporation control University policy in its bi-weekly meetings, while the Overseers have become more ceremonial, rubber-stamping major Corporation decisions such as appointments and serving as a breeding ground for Corporation members. The Overseers work primarily through a host of committees considering various areas of the University.

The Corporation today includes the same sorts of men it has for the last 100 years--wealthy, successful middle aged, and white. The board tends to be dominated by lawyers and businessmen, but the changes from time to time, with professors, doctors, and clergymen taking their turn.

The issue on which the Corporation has been most visible during President Bok's tenure has been shareholder responsibility. It first surfaced in 1972 when a group of Black students occupied Massachusetts Hall, demanding that Harvard divest from companies doing business in Angola. The University refused and has also resisted persistent pressure to divest from firms with operations in South Africa. Except perhaps for the Mass Hall takeover, which ended peacefully after a week, there has never been a crisis over divestiture, and the Corporation has been able to study the issue in excruciating detail. Former Treasurer George Putnam Jr. '49 went to South Africa a few years ago, and as chairman of the Corporation Committee on Shareholder Responsibility. High Calkins '45 has become something of an expert on the subject.

The Corporation's way of considering the issue reflects its characterize It refuses to discuss the problem from the purely ideological perspective divestiture activists take. Miners acknowledge that there are serious problem in the apartheid state and have pledged to do all they can to alleviate conditions there, but they consistently refuse to simplify the issue.

Occasionally the Corporation must deal with a specific policy question which cuts across faculty boundaries. Calkins and Francis H. Burr '35, who were both on the Corporation during the student upheavals of the late 1960s, say much could have been avoided if the University had adopted its decentralized administrative structure earlier, and been more responsive to community concerns. Calkins says that it Harvard then had a vice president in charge of community relations, many of the issues of the day either would not have developed or could have been dealt with much more easily.

Burr agrees, and he says that while the events of 1969 posed the toughest problems of his time on the board, they did not bring about the sweeping changes in Harvard's administration they are often given credit for. He says an administrative reshuffling was needed anyway and that they just accelerated the process. Most issues and decisions were still tackled in the same careful style. "I don't think a whole lot was accomplished by all that churning around," he says.

Fellow Robert G. Stone Jr. '45 says that when the Corporation faces an unfamiliar issue, its first response is to consult with as many people around the University as possible. "Very seldom we say unilaterally seven people can make the best decisions, because very often we have to seek advice from as many people as we can. We don't know all the answers," he says. This process was evident most recently when the University considered a proposal from Professor of Biochemistry Mark Ptashne to set up a profit-making genetic engineering company within the University. After extensive consultations inside and outside Harvard, the idea was rejected.

One issue that still dogs the Corporation is the question of representation. All of the current members come from the traditional Corporation background: wealthy, successful, middle-aged white males, and many critics continue to await the first woman or minority member.

Fellows acknowledge the problem and say a broader membership will surface in a matter of time, but they caution against overt tokenism. Calkins says the board must avoid, having a specific slot for a woman or a minority. Andrew Heiskell '28 adds that in recent years the Corporation has made a concerted effort to appoint a woman or minority but thus far has been unsuccessful.

"Unfortunately one of the qualifications of being on the Corporation is having the time and energy to do it," says Heiskell, longtime chairman of Time, Inc. "If you go to a successful Black lawyer the chances of his being able to give that kind of time as many as two months a year may be slim," he says.

Except for the president, none of the Corporation members are paid. The job requires a heavy time committment--the board meets for most of the day every other Monday--but the members say the pride of helping Harvard makes it worth it.

"One of the reasons I became a lawyer in the first place is because it is easier to combine a private practice type of career with doing other kinds of things," says Calkins. "I have done it because I enjoy it and I want to make some contribution to an institution which is important and I get a certain sense of satisfaction out of it. It is not a financially rewarding thing to do, but it is rewarding in other respects."

Heiskell cites similar reasons for serving but pauses and adds with a chuckle, "I admit I've enjoyed it, but sometimes I wonder why I do it and so does my wife."

This article was reported by John F. Baughman. Camille M. Caesar, David S. Hilzenruth, Peter J. Howe, and David I. Yermack.