JFK Institute Criticized By Harvard Professors

THE BIRTH of the Kennedy Institute of Politics has not been a quiet one. Right from the beginning the Institute has been under fire for its controversial Honorary Associates program which brought both McNamara and Goldberg to the Ivory Tower. Since then Henry Fairlie, British freelancer, has labeled the Institute a "recruiting college" for future Kennedy advisors.

More recently, a growing number of Harvard professors have begun to voice their concern about the direction the Institute may take. Conceived of as a link between the worlds of politics and academia, the Institute is now being attacked for blurring the line between the two worlds.

Stanley H. Hoffmann, professor of Government and faculty associate of the Kennedy Institute, said that one of the most challenging problems is to "maintain the thin line between studying the Establishment and accepting everything it stands for." Hoffmann saw the purpose of the Institute as twofold:

First, by bringing Washington officials to Cambridge, the Institute could provide those professors interested in policy problems with valuable information which is unavailable elsewhere. As a reciprocal gesture, Hoffmann continues, the professors could "psychoanalyze" the experiences of the officials and help them reflect on current policy problems. If this kind of relationship isn't achieved, the faculty-associates meetings will degenerate into social occasions -- too general to be useful.

The Institute's second function should be to promote research on public policy problems. The research should not only devote itself to a study of what policy should be, but also to questions of how policy is made, what the structure of policy-making is, and where the pressures come from.

"I would hope that this kind of research would not turn into a recruiting or seducing agency calculated to attract young scholars to the Government," Hoffmann said. To ensure that it doesn't, he continued the Administration must not be presented as something beyond criticism. "I have frankly found the reaction of many of my colleagues annoying," he continued. "They act as if students didn't have the right to ask questions of policymakers."

Voyeurs of Power

Hoffmann's main criticism of the Institute's programs thus far was directed at the Honorary Associates program. The large meetings with the Honorary Associates (McNamara and Goldberg) have only symbolic value --a real dialogue of any kind is impossible under this format. "We are all, by nature, voyeurs of power, but all we see in these public meetings is the political animal in his cage, and not in his natural environment." All too much time and energy is devoted to prominent public figures who can only either give the hard line or else be elusive and vague.

Instead the Institute should devote more time to lower-level officials, Hoffmann argues, because they are more at liberty to speak their mind.

Another problem which Hoffmann identified was the relationship between the Institute and the various departments of the University. Currently, the Institute is conducting undergraduate seminars without giving credit. A number of students, however, have complanied that they have to give priority to their credit courses before they can do any work for their non-credit seminars. If, on the other hand, the Institute decides to try to make their seminars for credit, they will run into a great deal of resistance from the Harvard faculty.

Abolish It?

But the solution to many of the problems which the Institute faces at this early point in its career, Hoffmann says, is not to abolish it. Even for many of the people who are dissatisfied with the Administration's policies, a working knowledge of how policy is made, and closer contact with Washington, would help them criticize the Establishment more intelligently, he maintains.

Although the Institute will tend to put a greater emphasis on policy-oriented studies, Harvard has strong Political Theory and Philosophy departments which will not be submerged. "The Institute will present tools for those interested in studying policy; it will not force anyone away from studying equally important questions of theory."

MICHAEL L. WALZER, associate professor of Government, takes a slightly less tolerant view of the Institute: "In the final analysis, I am not convinced that the Institute is necessary; both its intentions and its functions have yet to be made clear." Walzer (who taught what he described as the first and only theory course at the Woodrow Wilson School of Public and International Affairs) said that the primary danger of the Kennedy Institute is that it will create an over-fascination with policy questions, and will entice students away from studying history and philosophy.

To Walzer, public meetings such as the Goldberg affair, were not intellectual experiences, but they were not worthless either. "The meeting caused many students to reevaluate our Administration's policies," Walzer, who participated in the Goldberg confrontation, said. However, the smaller meetings give politicians a chance to be plausible, and they also give students the impression that they are being let in on state secrets, he said. "In formal meetings there are formal ways of being impolite, but when an official is 'letting his hair down' it is virtually impossible to be critical," he said. To ensure that politicians are not just given a platform, Walzer suggests that students be appointed to study the visitors' positions so that they can question him as a panel when he comes to Harvard.

The Hunting Ground

There is basically nothing wrong with allowing bureaucrats a chance to break away from their jobs for a year, Walzer said. "What they might learn, and hopefully the University is the place to learn it, is self-doubt." As for Washington-Cambridge relations, Walzer says that there have always been plenty of professors at Harvard who are willing to work for the Administration, and that the Institute will simply centralize the politicians' academic hunting-ground.

Adam B. Ulam, professor of Government, evaluated the Institute as being "more or less superfluous." Ulam contends that "it might have been useful to bring the politicians up to Harvard during the Eisenhower Administration -- when Harvard was more divorced from the Government -- but now there are enough professors involved."

Ulam agrees with Hoffmann that the prominent politicians are unable to "say any more than they could on T.V." when they appear at Harvard as public speakers. It would be much better to concentrate on the less prominent figures who could describe the pressures that affect their posture. But even here he is pessimistic about the possibilities: "There are very few men who can express themselves well enough to aptly describe the political process," he said.

The Institute is not designed to recruit, he suggests, but rather it does change a student's perspective. It's object is to attract students to a study of today's policy problems at a point in their education when Ulam believes they should be exposed to history and theory. The Institute aims at exciting young people about becoming the Secretary of Defense -- "undergraduates should be left alone for a few years before they are faced with this kind of specialization."

Martin H. Peretz, instructor in Social Studies, asserts that the Institute must justify itself as a positive gain to the community. "They obviously haven't thought through the full implications of what they're doing--they're just trying to spend all that money," Peretz declared.

"It takes a simplistic view of the political process to believe that officials will change their views after a few hours with the 'experts' at Harvard," he notes.

In a rare moment of sympathy for members of the Administration, Peretz said that it was unfair to put proiminent politicians on a platform and ask them to participate in a public dialogue, because they couldn't be expected to present more than a simplified PR image of their compliciated political lives. "If people come here to talk they must be able to be honest, and in order to be honest they must either have a certain distance from their subject or subtlety of speech." Instead of political or ceremonial events, Peretz says he would like to hear Dean Acheson speaking on Greece and Turkey or Oscar Huing on the origins of the Poverty Program. "If the Institute is genuinely interested in education, it will not continue to bring up one big pol after another," he said.

The Institute should not be recruiting future policy-makers either by subtle or direct methods, he continues. If the Institute insists on sponsoring political and ceremonial events then the students have every right to treat them as such and demonstrate against them. "To present these speakers as anything other than a political event under an academic disguise is a betrayal of the students," Peretz said.

It isn't as if Harvard is isolated from the outside world, Peretz continued, and needs to bring in officials from Washington -- "there are even some of us who think they are already in excess." In forcing the students to examine the Establishment and its mechanical process, Peretz said, the Institute has failed to internalize any kind of critical format which will allow the student to judge the Government as well as understand it. "If the people who are brought to speak to the students about politics can't be candid with them, then they just as well might be appearing on 'Meet the Press' or 'Face the Nation.'"

"One of the implications of what I'm saying might be interpreted as an isolationist stance, when in fact what I'm saying is that contact between Washington and Cambridge should not be institutionalized, but rather left up to individuals.

SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET, professor of Government and Social Sciences, takes a somewhat different tack. Lipset points out that Washington (unlike Paris, London, and Moscow) is one of the few major capitals which doesn't support a major university. The result, he contends, has been a marked lack of communication between the scholars and officials. Although the Kennedy Institute will not completely make up for Harvard's misplacement (or Washington's), it will be a great deal better than nothing and should foster closer ties between the Government and academia.

The Berkeley Yell

Although The Institute cannot substitute for the benefits of an academic capitol, Lipset says, it will allow the scholars a greater say in what goes on in Washington--something they have long looked forward to. One of the problems of our geographic location, he continues, is that when intellectuals go to work for the government they are separated from their academic work -- causing a kind of schizophrenia. Harvard has always supported the idea of closer relations between Cambridge and Washington as can be seen from a series of Harvard institutions -- the Graduate School of Public Affairs, the Center for International Affairs, the Neiman Fellows, and a number of Business School programs. Most professors at Harvard are no farther than one person removed from the policy-makers; if they don't know the politician themselves, then at least they know someone who knows them. But at other colleges, such as Berkeley "you have to yell to be heard in Washington."

Lipset does not subscribe to the theory that scholars will be enticed into the narrow world of policy-problem-solving, because he believes that academic prestige and rewards go to the "pure social scientists who don't dirty themselves in the outside world." "As soon as you make the cover of Time magazine, he explains, "your academic career is shot." There are two different kinds of people in the academic world, Lipset continues, "those who are looking for their place in politics, and those who are waiting to write a book which will live."

Lipset admits, however, that the closer one gets to the Government, the less critical one becomes: "you have friends in the Establishment and you realize the problems they face and the goodwill with which they make mistakes." There is no question that excess knowledge may inhibit criticism, and there are times when an outside, critical appraisal can be valuable to the Government in the long-run, he said.

The Institute, however, Lipset argues, is not apt to maintain its policy oriented stance for long. Just as the CFIA has become more and more academic, so Lipset predicts the Kennedy Institute will become more academic. It may, in fact, become the "Institute for American Politics" simply through academic pressure for such a department.

The upshot of these criticisms, with the exception of Lipset's, is that the Institute may foster an uncritical approach to policy-oriented research--and that through its Honorary Associates program it will encourage "political and ceremonial events."

Squeeze Play

Lipset explained the Left's hostility towards the Institute as being the result of a squeeze play. If the University takes up the role of the Establishment through the Institute, then where will the radical base be? But Lipset is convinced that the Left has already made inroads into the Institute and will continue to do so as long as they keep the pressure up.

The Left has a problem, Lipset continues, because they can't have it both ways. They complain first that they don't have any courses which are applicable today-- "We (the Left) are locked up in an Ivory Tower which has no contact with the events of today." But when the Ivory Tower is torn down, and the real world turns out to be the Establishment, then they want to rebuild their fortress--their Ivory Tower. "What the Left really wants is a politicized campus with a Left Penchant," or else they will scream that Theory is their protection against short-sighted, uncritical, policy-oriented education, he says.

The upshot of these criticisms, with the exception of Lipset's, is that the Institute may foster an uncritical approach to policy-oriented research -- and that through its Honorray Associates program, it will encourage "political and ceremonial events" instead of genuine educational debate. The Institute has yet to define its goals and remains in the sacred veil of "experimentation," but the critics are anxious and feel that it must justify itself in academic terms before it receives the blessing of the community.SEYMOUR MARTIN LIPSET Professor of Government