The dean of the faculty must be shrewd enough to gauge when the final push of a program should be made. A premature vote could kill a program, while unending debate might result in a hopelessly amended and watered-down proposal. He waits through the discussion until he feels that the Faculty is mostly agreeable. This moment might come earlier than Administration critics expect, as this winter when the Advanced Standing proposals cleared the Faculty after only two meetings.

The attitude of the Faculty also helps to give the Administration power to put through its policies. Most members are bound up in their own teaching and research and do not become overly agitated about changes in policy. Even for meetings about academic mattes, where interest is greatest, only one-third of the Faculty ever turns up on Tuesday afternoons. Then too, there is a question of facts, and figures: when the Bender Report for augmented tutorial was presented there were many objections from the affected departments. But Faculty members find it hard to argue on the spur of the moment against men who have devoted months to researching a plan and can spout impressive figures. Administration spokesmen are often much better prepared for debate than their faculty opponents.

Strength from Money

Control of the purse-strings is undeniably one of the Dean of the Faculty's greatest powers. If he is determined to defeat a proposal, he can claim that the budget will not stand an extra strain. Or, if he favors a new plan, he will try to scrape up the money somehow. While Provost Buck was urging the Bender Plan on the Faculty, he was also arranging for $1,000,000 from the Allston Burr bequest to finance the program. It was hard for even the most dubious to argue against a profferred million dollars.

Like the CEP, the committee on Athletics is a Faculty Committee. But here the Administration has taken over even more thoroughly. In 1950, Provost Buck submitted to the Corporation a report on the state of athletics at Harvard. Buck saw three alternatives for the University: begin a recruiting plan to lure the best football players to Harvard, give up football altogether, or drawn up a schedule with weaker opponents, making each game a more even contest. Buck, of course, recommended the third proposal.

Then rebellion began in the athletics department. William Bingham, the Athletics Director, started to attack Buck's program publicly. But the Administration know how to cope with this opposition. Buck recommended the formation of a new committee, the Faculty Committee on athletics, and exercising his perogative, appointed the members to this committee. Bingham was then asked to retire as athletics Director and accept instead a "promotion" to the post of chairman of the new Faculty committee. This Committee was so well packed with men favorable to the Administration's position that there was little question of any further challenge to Buck's plan.

Just as the Administration works through University Hall, the Faculty conducts much of its routine business through department chairmen. Unlike most colleges, Harvard's chairmen are generally not the top-most men in each department. They are instead men mid-way on the academic ladder who will take on the paper work of running an office; rarely does a department chairman serve more than three or four years.

In making major decisions in department, however, the chairman has just one voice and often not the loudest one. On a question like appointments to the faculty, a vote of the department determines who will be nominated for a permanent post. Though it may appear that the "dictatorship" which Acheson spoke of becomes, in this situation, an oligarchy, the Administration keeps a firm hand on the appointment of men to the Faculty.

Faculty Uprising

At this point the "Granstein Plan" rears its mathematical head; for in 1937 there was a revolt among the Faculty which led to an entire revision of the appointment apparatus. The problem of tenure had become increasingly difficult for President Conant because his predecessor had personally decided to retain men on the Faculty who had not qualified for permanent appointments. During the depression these men were a decided strain on the budget and Conant felt he had to start trimming the payroll. He gave orders that all non-permanent appointees, with a few exceptions in each department, would have to leave the College at the end of the year in 1936.

The Economics department, however, did not understand the order and so recommended that two instructors. Sweezy and Walsh, be kept on despite the fact that they were not going to be permanent appointments. The Administration would not make an exception land the two men were notified that they would be dropped.

At this point the Faculty banded together in protest. The two instructors were both to the far left in their political leanings, so the cry of academic freedom was heard, though the matter was simply a budgetary one. Relations between Conant and some professors became increasingly strained, and resulted in an unheard-of request by the teaching staff.

One hundred and thirty-one non-permanent teaching officers asked that eight professors--and not the Administration--study the entire tenure problem and specifically make recommendations about Walsh and Sweezy. The eight men, including Professors Morison, Shapley, Schlesinger, and Felix Frankfurtor, wrote to Conant asking that he appoint a special committee as the instructors had requested and adding that if he would not, the eight would not, the eight would investigate anyway.

This is one of the few times in recent Harvard history that an important committee was neither initiated nor appointed by the Administration. And for the next two years, this committee became the real force in the matter of tenure.

Of the two reports issued by the Committee of Eight one dealt exclusively with Walsh and Sweezy, recommending that they be kept on. The President took this proposal to the Corporation, who vetoed it. The incident shows the advantage to the President in his dual role of Administrator and Corporation member. Had Conant turned down the request again, there probably would have been more hard feeling within the Faculty. Since the action was the Corporation's, however, Conant was not blamed.