The Student-Faculty Committee

It took the Faculty two hours to debate the fate of the anti-Dow demonstrators. At 6 p.m., professors were heading for the doors, and President Pusey was anxious to be done with the whole affair. He had chaired the meeting with evident brusqueness, clearly had little enthusiasm for prolonged discussion of the Mallinckrodt business, and he had a press conference scheduled for 6:15. Stanley Hoffmann, professor of Government, rose to make a motion.

In ten minutes, Harvard was somehow on the way to the most radical, ill-defined, unexpected, and perhaps propitious administrative innovation in recent years: a student-Faculty committee. Most of the essential questions--who would be on it, what they would talk about, and who would talk to them--were not spelled out at the Faculty meeting, nor are they clear now.

In fact, it was far from sure at the meeting that there would be a committee at all. Hoffmann called for a committee made up of students, Faculty members, and Administration officials to discuss who should be allowed to recruit on campus, the limits of acceptable debate, and the extent of University involvement in the Vietnam war. Hoffmann's motion also asked that recruitment here by controversial agencies and corporations be suspended while discussions took place.

The motion never came to a vote. Pusey looked at it and raised a few questions: How, for example, would Faculty members who are also Administration officials be considered for purposes of selection to such a committee? Pusey asked Hoffmann whether the two could consult before actually taking a vote on the idea. Hoffmann agreed, and the meeting ended.

A number of professors who ardently supported the idea of a joint committee left with the queasy feeling that the Administration had succeeded in forestalling action at least until the next Faculty meeting. That was not Pusey's intent. At the press conference after the meeting, Dean Ford made it clear that even without a vote the Administration felt committed to establish a student-Faculty group of some kind. What had been preserved by Pusey's action was not a path for avoiding action, but rather a maximum of flexibility in setting up the committee.

Ford, it is clear, will take the leading role in collecting ideas and making recommendations to Pusey. Ford himself, far from being hostile to the idea, has indicated to some Faculty members that he rather likes it.

But the arguments that persuade Faculty members that a joint committee would now be wise differ sharply from the visions shared by radical student advocates. Some members of Students for a Democratic Society want to see a committee that will bring to an end, for example, military recruitment on campus. Ford has said that he sees little possibility for a significant change in Harvard's recruitment policy; according to Hoffmann, the only Faculty criticism of his motion has been on the provision for a suspension of recruitment; Hoffmann himself says that the suspension request was ill advised, and that while he doesn't think corporations have an unassailable "right to recruit," he would be leary of setting up restrictions.

Hoffmann felt that way at the time he made the motion. While it was drafted in the five minutes before the Faculty meeting and seemed something of an afterthought, Hoffmann and a number of other professors had considered the idea for some days. Hoffmann had come to the conclusion that since restricting recruitment is unlikely and probably unwise, it was going to be necessary to figure out ways in which recruitment could acceptably be protested. Student radicals who feel that any demonstration that hampers the "war machine" should be permitted, and that University officials should do their part by barring objectionable recruiters in the first place, are unlikely to savor talks on demonstration ground rules.

But that is only minor quibbling. The explosive business of the committee--if it is given the mandate suggested by Hoffmann--will be its investigation of government-backed research at Harvard. To happy SDSers, it conjures up images of the head of some research institute squirming uncomfortably under relentless questioning on the sources of his money.

A joint committee would no doubt provide them the opportunity to ask the questions. Numerous Faculty committees ask professors periodically to testify in closed sessions. It is likely that any Faculty member invited by one that holds public hearings would abide by tradition and come anyway.

Students entranced with possible investigations figure that exposure of government involvements will inspire action to end them. Hoffmann doubts it. His idea of the committee--which is no doubt shared in broad outline by Ford--provides not simply for revelations of involvement but a good deal of discussion as to what it all means.

Hoffmann does not want to see a small investigating committee. He sees a body with something like 40 members, half of them professors appointed by Pusey, the other half students (elected House by House, or selected from a wide range of organizations, or--least desirable, to Hoffmann--appointed by Pusey). That sort of committee would not only discover government finances but include members who stoutly advocate maintaining them. And the burden would be on radical members to make a persuasive case for their elimination.

A number of Faculty advocates of the committee assume that a convincing case will not be made. As long as research conforms to Harvard's rule--that the source of funds doesn't matter provided the research is not secret--Faculty members are unlikely to find wisdom in other reasons for banning it.

What is likely to emerge from such discussions is simply a more widespread realization that the source of finances heavily determines the focus of research in the University--and that as a matter of educational philosophy, an increasing emphasis on government-oriented topics is somewhat lamentable and probably inevitable.