Buck does not believe in activity for activity's sake, but idealizes a "living and learning' environment where the student Partakes in activities on his own initiative. "Thus instead of a required music course, you have many musical activities available, or a library like Lamont where a student read when he wants."

In his remarks at the opening of Lamont Library he stressed this free access theme: "Harvard was synonymous with free minds openly browsing through all the orthodoxies and heresies of history, through good book, bad books, and mediocre books. Harvard deserved more than Virginia, the great inscription of Thomas Jefferson, 'Here we fear no heresy where truth is free to combat error.'" But he noted also contrary forces, "a clever subtile devil, appearing in devious ways." Sometimes his attack has been frontal, as "when a century age there was a restriction on anti-slavery discussion. . .or when he appeared in the guise of gentility to suggest that Dunster House students would not profit by reading Norman Douglas' South Wind. . .Here today we mark the opening of a Library built on a simple idea that books were made to be used. . .Here indeed it can be said that we believe in an aducation based upon free access to all."

For a man who is so intimately involved in University policy, Buck manages to keep remarkably aloof from the debates and conflicts of the Faculty, but still some Faculty antagonism has been periodically directed against the unruffled Provost; his critics feel he has power far greater than that of any other Dean, and he, with Conant, dominates the Faculty with absolute finality. But as is his way, Buck never attempts to refute such charges, merely chuckles scoffingly. Once to a group of freshmen, he said: "Harvard would be a more restful place for the denizens of University Hall were there less discord. But eliminate the discord and you dry up the source of Harvard greatness."

Seldom does have he venture outside of his spacious University Hall office. He is not, as one faculty member put, it the type of person "one collects anecdotes about." Every now and then, however, he does enter non-academic forays. In 1947, for example, a group of professors organized a committee to present a plaque to the state for erection on Boston Common as a memory of Sacco and Vanzentti, the Boston fishpeddler and shoemaker who were convicted of murder in a trial that had nasty political overtones.

Organizer requested such personages as Albert Einstein, Dean Sturgis of Yale Law School, and Eleanor Roosevelt to serve on a committee to present the plan to the Governor. But the plaque-backers were way of asking a Harvard official because President Lowell had been a member of a three-man board which reviewed and approved the sentences of Sacco and Vanzentti 1927. Presumably either in deference to Lowell or to alumni pressure, a Harvard official would decline to serve. Nevertheless someone approached Provost Buck, and to the Committee's surprise, he accepted. The proposal, however, never got any further than the Governor's office.

That same year, some letter-writing alumni became unhappy aroused when Henry Wallace was invited to make a speech at Harvard. At the time Wallace was busily attacking U.S. foreign policy, Wall Street, Defense Secretary Forrestal, and the Marshall Plan, and some alumni considered Wallace worse than a contagion carrier.

Buck ignored the quiverings. Instead he introduced Wallace to the throng of 7,000 gathered at the baseball field. Said Buck: "I do not know what Mr. Wallace will say tonight--whether it is heresy or truth. I have a notion that I am going to disagree vehemently with what he has to say because I personally am convinced that the program espoused by Mr. Marshall is the best practical method for the achievement of a just and lasting peace. But what Mr. Wallace or any man who at the moment may be in a minority-- popular or unpopular--has to say is not so important as that his right to express his views is respected--and that the right of Harvard students to hear these divergent views is also respected." Even the stuffy Alumni Bulletin was moved to praise, saying "the special significance of Mr. Buck's address was in his refusal to limit intellectual freedom to the classroom."

Recently Buck has spent much time working with "Commission on Financing Higher Education," and unaffiliated, non-profit group. In a chapter entitled "The Nature of Higher Education," contributed mainly by Buck, the Commission points out that "there is a danger that as a people we shall not understand the vital role of higher education in our society sufficiently well to support it adequately and in the right way. . . a free society should provide opportunity for higher education to every student so equipped and possessing such drive, regardless of economic and social background.

To Help the Most

This has been Buck's policy in admissions, and Dean of Admissions Bender presently is seeking such students, continually drawing on generous scholarship funds. Thus Provost Buck's consistency in following a policy that aids as many as possible starts even before the entering class his entered. Certainly not a naïve idealism, his faith in scholastic latitude perhaps formed first in the southern Ohio town where he remembers seeing one high school classmate working as a Hotel doorman and another directing the local bank. "It is difficult to maintain this valley of democracy," he admits, but the University can contribute greatly to its continuation. He believes that "Harvard, if it is to remain preeminent as a university, has a special responsibility to guard jealously its free market of ideas. By doing so it can contribute both to a nation built on free institutions and to the advancement of learning."