Back to the Future: 50 Years Later a Freshman Returns

Exactly 50 years ago, I arrived at Harvard and settled into Hurlbut Hall, then a newly converted freshman dorm. I returned this month as a fellow at the Kennedy School of Government’s (KSG) Institute of Politics (IOP). The changes are startling.

The walk from Hurlbut to the KSG tells only a small part of the story. Back then the Inn at Harvard was a Gulf gas station; the Holyoke Center was Dudley House for commuters; Hillel was squash courts. JFK Street was Boylston Street, with a Mobil station and Vespa dealer. A vast trolley yard stood where the KSG now stands, and Quincy was under construction. Radcliffe and Harvard shared only classes, and few extracurricular groups were co-ed. Two years after Brown v. Board of Education, we were almost entirely white, disproportionately preppies, and insensitive to both the discomfort of our very few minority classmates and the wider civil rights issues fermenting around the nation.

President Nathan M. Pusey ’28 was not yet well known to the students let alone the world, but had stood up to some of the worst abuses of the cold war “red scares.” His low-key governance matched the times on and off campus: It was the Eisenhower era, generally peaceful and prosperous.

There was little political interest, at least among my friends and dorm-mates. Fidel Castro, then the new Cuban leader, spoke at Harvard, and there were anti-nuclear sing-ins at a local coffee shop, but when the fire marshals shut down the shop hours before one event, few noticed. Woolworth’s in the Square drew occasional picketing and sit-ins, but few of us realized that it was part of a great movement to desegregate public accommodations nationwide.

Yes, there were Democratic and Republican clubs, and some classmates followed national news, but the real issue of the day was “parietals”—the rules limiting women’s visits to the dorms (1 to 4 p.m. on weekdays and until 8 p.m. on Saturday nights for freshmen). My dorm entered campus politics by nominating a nonexistent candidate for the freshman council and parading him through the yard. The Crimson viewed the Student Council as a bunch of “talkative politicians” with “little discernible reason to continue to exist,” and recommended its abolition. Of course, our overriding governmental concern was the draft system, which offered deferments for college and grad school, and in some cases, for government work.

I had a window on national politics as a newsman on WHRB, the student-run radio station. I interviewed Eisenhower’s press secretary and the chief assistant to Senator John F. Kennedy ’40, and eventually Kennedy himself, first in West Virginia during the 1960 primary and then during his post-election visit for a Board of Overseers meeting. But although I came from a progressive family, I was not political, and it never occurred to me in 1956 or 1960 that I should—or that I, as an individual student, could—do anything directly about the election. Many of the faculty members were active in these campaigns, but that didn’t rub off on most of us. My public service consisted of helping form the Harvard Motor Scooter Corps of Cambridge Civil Defense, which, in case of nuclear attack, would ride out to find passable roads for fire trucks.

How different Harvard is today. It is alive with institutions, inspiration and ideas, aggressively transmitting a clear message: you must learn what is going on in the wider world; you should be sensitive to the plight and needs of others no matter how comfortable you are; you can participate—in some way—in addressing great and small issues of the day.

For example, the Kennedy School’s dozens of institutes and centers and programs—starting with the Institute of Politics itself, which celebrates its 40th year this weekend and is led by a former Governor, Jeanne Shaheen of New Hampshire—draw thousands of people to participate in the living memorial to the man who told my generation to “ask what you can do for your country.” They range from freshmen eager for their first campaign, to giants from government, politics and the media, who come to recharge their batteries and rethink their premises.

This vast supply of energy and education for public service at Harvard, largely undiscovered and untapped by students 50 years ago, meets a tide of student demand today. Almost every event at the KSG is filled to the rafters, as are the many classes elsewhere in the University that deal with government, policy, politics, the Constitution, and managing public institutions. Harvard’s students want to know how they can be part of the solution to the nation’s and world’s problems. The KSG and IOP reach out to respond, and so too has the rest of the University. For instance, the Law School’s Office of Public Interest Advising is outstanding, and Dean Elena Kagan has made public interest law and public service a visible priority on its website, in its classrooms and clinical programs, and among its faculty.

I was lucky. I found my call to public service and public interest law after I went to Washington for a one-year job in 1963, and stayed. Today’s students do not have to trust their luck. The foundation for their call to public service is right here, in a smorgasbord of activities as accessible as the frozen yogurt in the omnipresent self-serve machine—another Harvard amenity not present a half-century ago. So I say to them: Eat! Enjoy! Learn! Commit! Graduate! Serve!

James F. Flug ’60 was chief counsel to Senator Edward M. Kennedy ’54 from 1967 to 1973 and 2003 to 2006 and has served in a variety of other public interest legal positions during his four decades in Washington. He is a fellow at the Institute of Politics this term, leading a study group on “the Senate as a check on the President.”