An Open Letter From the Student Strikers of 1969

An open letter to President Derek C. Bok, Vice President Daniel Steiner '54, Vice President Fred L. Glimp '50 and Dean of Students Archie C. Epps III.

WE have gathered at Harvard in April, 1989, to commemorate the events of April, 1969, which we are sure you remember well. Our purpose is not merely to reminisce, but also to raise with you--administrators of Harvard then and now--some "unfinished business."

In 1969 we particpated in the building occupation and strike to demand the removal of ROTC training from Harvard, and end to Harvard's eviction of low-income tenants and demolition of affordable housing in Cambridge and the establishment of an Afro-American studies department. We believe these demands to have been justified, and the actions we took to have been necessitated by the intransigence of the Harvard administration in refusing to respond to student and faculty concerns.

Today there is no ROTC training at Harvard; the former ROTC building now houses a day-care center. Army officers are no longer granted the course curriculum. We view this as a considerable improvement, and a vindication of the goals of the '69 strike. However, Harvard has become nationally and internationally known for its refusal to divest its holdings in companies doing business in South Africa. Long after many other universities, city and state governments, pension funds and other institutions have fully divested, long after Rev. Sullivan and other advocates of gradual change in South Africa have come to support full divestment, Harvard still holds $250 million in South Africa-related stocks. More than 10 thousand Harvard and Radcliffe alumni/ae have supported prodivestment candidates for the Board of Overseers, electing three. Why does our University still stubbornly refuse to divest?

Some Harvard expansion policies were slowed by the strike of '69 and the rent-control and tenant activism which partly derived from it. The University Road apartments, and issue in the strike, have remained standing for 20 years. But Harvard's negative role in the Cambridge housing market has continued. According to the Cambridge Tenants Union, Harvard's lawyers and real estate managers have become experts at using loopholes in the rent-control laws to raise rents and "gentrify" apartments, worsening the affordable housing crisis in Cambridge. We also note that Harvard was recently in the news for welding over its heating grates to prevent the homeless from sleeping on them. When can we expect to see our alma mater becoming part of the solution, rather than part of the problem, of affordable housing and homelessness?

An Afro-American Studies department now exists at Harvard, thanks to strike activism. But the department has been inadequately supported by the administration, and its professors have often been denied tenure. And in a recent New York Times article ("Harvard Accused of Lag on Minority Hiring," March 5), a panel of faculty members reported a poor record on hiring of women and minority faculty. According to Lawrence Watson, co-chair of the Association of Black Faculty and Administrators at Harvard, "If Harvard as the premier institution that trains the best and brightest is a place that is absent of the best Black men and women, it sends a message that we are not very good." This report followed an equally critical report 10 years earlier. Ten years, 20 years...how long must women and minorities wait on Harvard's good graces?

A major issue of the '69 strike was the corporate domination of Harvard. Today we see corporate Harvard in continued conflict with its Buildings and Grounds, Food Service and Clerical and Technical employees. Harvard fought hard to deny recognition to the Clerical and Technical workers' union, throwing the University's legal resources into a court battle--in which Harvard's case was thrown out, and the University was chastised by the judge for frivolous legal maneuvers. How long will the University's resources continue to be devoted to opposing social justice?

Much of the intensity of the '69 conflict came from the perception that Harvard acted not as an independent academic institution but as a hand-maiden of government policy and corporate interests. In recent years we have seen a spectacle of sycophancy at the Kennedy School of Government. Most egregious was the Kennedy School's award to former Attorney General Ed Meese. But the pattern hgas been borne out by many other events, such as allowing Assistant Secretary of State Elliot Abrams to dictate the conditions of his appearance at the K-School, "disinviting" former ambassador Robert White, an administration critic, at Abram's demand.

And at the Law School, President Bok has overriden the recommendations of faculty by denying tenure to critical scholars. Most recently, President Bok again overrode faculty to appoint a new Dean whose stated goal is to "combat" critical views in jurisprudence. Newly appointed Dean Clark also spoke scathingly of Professor Derrick Bell's sit-in protest against suppression of critical views (Bell is one of two tenured Black professors at the Law School). Said Clark, "This is a university--not a lunch counter in the Deep South." President Bok's continued efforts to purge the Law School of Critical Legal Studies (itself an outgrowth of '60s critical thought) threaten to polarize the faculty and entrench very conservative, corporate-oriented legal education. When will Harvard start to encourage rather than to suppress independent and political thinking? When will Harvard abandon its unseemly subservience to corporate and political power?

The evidence might suggest that the answer to all these questions is "never." Nonetheless we see hope. We see hope in the movement of alumni/ae to elect progressive, pro-divestment overseers. We see hope in the continuing student movements for divestment, to support union workers, against Central American intervention, for women's, minority and gay and lesbian rights. We know that without these movements--if we had to trust to the social conscience and tender mercies of the Harvard Corporation and administration--the outlook would be grim indeed. We are proud of our history, proud of those who continue the battle for social justice and hopeful for change at Harvard and in the world. Is it too much to hope, as Bishop Tutu has said, that Harvard might be remembered for its contributions to the effort rather than for its opposition? The answer rests partly with you--but far more with the students, faculty, staff and alumni/ae whose University Harvard truly is. We place our faith in them.

Participants in the Harvard Strike of 1969:

Stephen Reid Minot '72, Chester king '72, Michael Felsen '71, Alan Zaslavsky '68, Martin Hanlon '69, Eric Entemann (GSAS'67), James Lester '69, Peggy Lester (KSG '88), Carl D. Offner '64, Sarah Glazer '70, Eric S. Roberts '73, Chester Hartman '57, Alan Gilbert '65, Aldyn McKean '70-'71, Susan Jhirad '64, Molly Backup '72, Mary Ellen Burns '70, Henry J. Sommer '71, Dale B. Fink '71-'72, Harry Rudloe '73, Craig Unger '71, Carol Sternhell '71, deborah Johnson '71, William M. kutik '70, Jan L. Handke (SPH '75), Mark R. Cullen '71 M. Barry '70, Mary Summers '70, Virginia Vogel Zanger '70-'72, Sylvia Lester '70, Felice Perlman '71-'73, Lowry Hemphill '72, Jonathan M.Harris '69-'71, Jean Alonzo '59, Charles Bernstein '72, Daniel Gilbarg '68, David Schuldberg '72-'73, Jonathan Walters '71, Judith E. Smith '70, Frances A. Maher '64, Holly Cheever '71, Ellen Gesmer '71-'72, Bernie Blustein '72-'73, Paul R.Harrison '72, Michael D.Cohen '70, Michael Ansara '68, J. Kenyon Chapman '69, Robert Kessler '71, Rebecca Klatek, Jane Stein '71, Nathan L. Goldshlag '71, Mark R. Dyer '70-'72, Joshua Freeman '70, Katha Pollitt '71, James H.Barton '58, Katherine K. Christoffel '69, Naomi A. Schapiro '71, Tom Christoffel (HLS '70), Ken Barnes '70, Judy Lieberman '69, Susan B. McLane '71, Judy L. Harrison, Peter S. wiss, Keith Nelson '65, Judith Larzelere, Kenneth Kronenberg, James klein '71, Paul Robins '70, Norman Daniels '71, Robert Krim '70, Samuel Baker '69, Jared Israel '65-'67, Miles Rapoport '71, John C. Berg (GSAS '75), Milton Kotelchuck (GSAS '72), Bruce C. Allen '69-'73.