At one point in his recent campaign for president, Dwight D. Eisenhower took the stump to inveigh against "Harvard words" and Harvard men in the United States government. This may have influenced the voters in Kansas City, but once the Eisenhower administration is underway anyone who makes a short survey of our Washington bureaucracy will still find it riddled with Harvard men.

However, these government servants will not all be graduates of the College or Law School suddenly elevated to high position, but rather career bureaucrats who hold their civil service jobs regardless of administration politics. They are graduates of the Littauer Center of Public Administration, a school which has become so influential in the 15 years since it was founded that it is today recognized as the northern terminus of a two-way shuttle of experts between Harvard and Washington.

The influence that the Littauer School grabbed in the New Deal and will continue to hold in a Republican term is due to the simple belief that the administrator does more than administrate. He must be able, not merely to administer the laws which govern his department, but to lobby for new ones. He must be briefed in public policy as well as administrative practice.

For many years Littauer's broad policy approach has opposed the trade school approach up and down the battlefield of the public service, until, one by one, the country's other administration schools grudgingly adopted the Littauer method.

Other Bombshells

This was not the only bombshell Littauer has dropped into the field of government. Shortly after the war, the School developed the case studies in public policy, to introduce the successful case teaching method of the Law and Business schools into the field of administration. And its Consultant Program, which has secretly brought top government officials to Cambridge every week for the last decade, has established the link between the ivory tower and the Capitol Building, between the theory of government and its practice, that has resulted in the steady professorial migration to Washington of the last few years.

Yet, the Littauer School has never developed itself as consistently and rationally as it has the programs it has exported. Throughout its history, the school has been continually experimenting--absorbing and rejecting new courses and new types of students. Originally formed as a place where mature civil servants could reflect and research on public problems, Littauer has become a hodgepodge of downy-cheeked future administrators, prospective teachers, PhD. candidates, and special government trainees.

Littauer has never been quite sure where it was going in its internal development partly because its has never quite known what it was. Every year it is the task of Arthur N. Holcombe '06, professor of Government, to explain dutifully to incoming students what he calls "the mystery of Littauer." He points out that, other than Dean Edward S. Mason, the school has no faculty members of its own--the men who teach are paid by the Law School, Business School, or School of Arts and Sciences. Nor has it any courses that are not also listed in the catalogue or the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. In other words, Littauer is sort of an academic holding company, which draws on the capital of other faculties and other departments to bring academic skills to future public servants.

Barter and Trade

The same sort of barter and trade with the rest of the University takes place among Littauer's student body. Of the 100 students presently in the school, the majority are merely picking up Littauer's Master of Public Administration degree on their way to bigger things. Littauer shares them with the Graduate School of Arts and Sciences, where they are candidates for that School's notoriously complicated "Joint Degree" in Political Economy and Government. Essentially, this "joint degree" program is a limbo for social science students dwell in while they decide whether to teach or go into government.

The only other sizable chunk of Littauer's student "body" is the group in the agricultural extension program of John D. Black, Henry Lee Professor of Economics and dean of American agrarian economists. Over the past five years, this program has tried to bring a little bit of Harvard influence into many of the six million farm homes in the United States. Picked from state agricultural extension agencies and financed by the Carnegie Corporation, Black's 25 or more students do intensive work in their special farm field, and also dip into the more advanced theory of agricultural economies. These academic farmers do bring to Littauer the practical experience most students lack. In fact, after their academic stretch, the agricultural extension students have advanced farther and faster in government that Littauer's other products. Black's colleagues agree that his falls, has had as profound an influence unique program, for all its academic piton the public service as almost all the rest of Littauer.

Classes Without Students

The sudden importance of the agricultural extension program is typical of Littauer's development. The School has always been marked by constant change and unorthodox academic procedure. It was, for example, probably the only school in existence to hold classes for a year before it admitted any students. This was in 1937, when, after Lucius N. Littauer had donated over $2 million to establish the School and Center which bear his name, a special conference was held to blueprint the new approach to administration. Over 75 government leaders attended, some of them so important their names were barred from the press for security reasons. James R. Williams, Nathaniel Ropes Professor of Political Economy and first dean of Littauer led the conferences.

Secret Guests

Besides the revolutionary goals, the most important thing to come out of these top-level meetings was Littauer's Washington consultant program. Its procedure soon became traditional. The guest of the day, who might be a bureau chief, cabinet undersecretary, or National Chairman of a political party, would come to Cambridge in mid-afternoon. After addressing a seminar for a couple of hours he would be guest of honor at a dinner. Later the discussion would resume in the plush Littauer lounge. Sometimes, it would be another four hours, the bigwig called time and was spirited away to the airport or train station. Since the guest was exclusively the property of Littauer, the rest of the University never even knew he was in town.