We're in Good Hands

THE centerpiece of the shantytown built in the Yard two springs ago was a 16-foot-high ivory tower symbolizing the attitude of the ruling University elite towards students and society. The town itself was named the "Open University" to stand, in the words of one of its builders, "as an ideal toward which Harvard should strive." "Democracy--at Harvard and South Africa," he wrote in The Crimson at the time, "is at the core of the divestment struggle."

I long have fancied myself a big-D and a small-d democrat, yet have never quite understood the slogan "More democracy at Harvard!"--assuming it is more than an empty catchphrase. What is meant by "democracy," and why must Harvard be one? The vague calls for "democracy at Harvard" which have been strewn about my four-year sojourn here result from a reductionism that assumes because democracy may be the best way to run a country or any political unit, then, surely, everything should be run that way.

It is at least a possibility that while democracy should be the rule in the public arena, it need not be the operating principle of private institutions and relations. There are of course many realms of life in which democratic norms and forms do not prevail. Businesses and families, to name two, are not necessarily best run by democratic principles. At some point, hierarachy and authority must be relied upon when it comes time to make a decision. More important is the possibility that undemocratic private institutions are necessary for democracy to flourish in the public world of politics.

The university has a role in the unfolding history of democracy, but one apart from it. It is, at its best, a bulwark against passionate and transitory opinion ignorant of the lessons of the past and the thought of great thinkers. It seems odd to extoll the virtues of democracy at Harvard when one of the ennobling justifications of the university is its status apart from democracy and its role as a check on democracy's excesses.

The value and virtue of a liberal arts education, in theory, is that it liberates those who experience it from their preconceptions and prejudices. But someone has to instigate the liberation. If the university is to be an elite preserver of standards, one apart from society, then it follows that within the university there need to be individuals with the authority (and willingness) to pass judgment untrammeled by common sentiment.

IT would seem more productive to understand the great university--say Harvard--as more of a democratizing than a democratic institution. There, ideally, are brought together peoples of all different ethnic, religious, racial and class backgrounds dedicated to what must be non-democratic principles: the pursuit of dispassionate truths and a healthy (and critical) respect for traditions and authorities that have earned our attention. Most will not stay on after their four years here, and therein lies the university's annual gift to the public world ever since enrollments opened up after World War II: a democratized, de-aristocricized corps of future leaders of society.

Assuming that Harvard's rulers are enlightened despots, it would not be inconsistent for those who run it to be more open to student concerns in their policy deliberations. Still, that does not mean the hierarchy need follow the particular student passions of a given four-year cycle. While individuals come and go, the University, as it has been put in one well-worn formulation, will be here forever. It is the job of the Corporation and the administration to see that it gets there, that of the faculty to make it stand above the ephemeral and worthy of eternity.