Despite the ambiguity over the concept behind the Fellowships, Neustadt feels that the Fellows can play an important role in the Institute by helping "to stimulate and participate in the intellectual activity of the Faculty members in study groups."
The Study Groups
THE STUDY groups themselves are probably the least visible part of the Institute's program, and probably the most significant. This year they have gotten under way somewhat slowly because there was neither sufficient time nor staff to do the planning necessary for a large-scale effort. Henry Rowen, former assistant director of the Bureau of the Budget, was slated to join the Institute as "director of studies," but instead accepted an unexpected appointment as president of the RAND Corporation.
And the three other Faculty planners (Adam Yarmolinsky '43, professor of Law and chairman of the Fellowship committee; Dean Price; and Ernest R. May, professor of History and chairman of the student activities committee) were occupied primarily with other Institute business. In addition, the Institute lost the permanent services last spring of Carl Kaysen, who left Harvard to become the director of the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, Kaysen had been associate dean of the old G.S.P.A., an aide to President Kennedy, and a key planner of the Institute after it was conceived in late 1963.
Next fall, however, the Faculty study groups will be given higher priority when a director of studies takes office. If Henry Fairlie is correct, and no one in the Institute has openly denied it, Francis Bator, a former professor of Economics at M.I.T. and national security aide to President Johnson, will assume the post.
Bator, if the rumors are correct, will be in charge of administering and coordinating the program, which, in Neustadt's words, "is probably the most important thing we're doing." These groups, ideally, will involve the Fellows, bring visitors to the Institute for short periods of time, and may even furnish the topics for the undergraduate seminars.
The basic aim of the study groups, in Neustadt's and Price's eyes, was to attain one of the goals of the old G.S.P.A. which had been unfulfilled because of insufficient financing. That was to serve as the source of independent public policy research. This aspect of the Institute, Neustadt explains, will fit "the focus of the Kennedy School in that it will serve as a hinge between the academic disciplines and professional schools."
The various study groups, whose members will be drawn from all the Faculties in the University, but generally from professors already affiliated with the Institute as members or associates, will consider "operational questions of public policy that are on the fringe of several academic disciplines."
The overall purpose of the study groups will be, as Neustadt says, "to render educational assistance on problems from nine months to nine years away to public services." Neustadt emphasized, however, that the Institute would not accept any government contract work, and would take on problems in the study groups that interested its members. In other words, the Institute would avoid the position of acting at the government's behest.
This does not mean that the Institute's research functions will be carried out in a vacuum. Neustadt explains that the concerns of the study groups will, in all cases, "have prospective, but definitely not immediate relevance for policy-makers." But, he adds, all their activities will be exempt from any sort of outside pressure, although Neustadt feels that the members of the individual groups may wish to invite government officials to their meetings to discuss particular issues.
At present, there area few pilot studies, one on East-West European relations, another on the impact of bureaucratic politics on policy-making, another on the relation of economic equilibrium theory to government operations, and a recently-initiated one on the impact of altering the Selective Service laws.
Most of them are conducted in informal, periodic dinner meetings. It is hard at this point, Neustadt feels, to predict what shape the groups' results will take. But Dean Price feels that the groups may have a function analagous to the seminars held by the Council on Foreign Relations in that they could stimulate one of their participants to write a scholarly work on a problem raised and discussed by the groups.
It is unlikely that the Institute's independence of the government, and its refusal to give credit course in either the Faculty of Arts and Sciences or the Kennedy School, will dispel many of its critics. For many, the idea of the Institute serving, in Neustadt's words, "as the research arm of the Kennedy School," will be repugnant. It will evoke cries that intellectuals are compromising themselves by maintaining contacts with government officials and concerning themselves with the constraints that operate on policy-makers.
To the Institute, however, this seems to avoid a central issue. A substantial portion of the Harvard community simply desires to confront policy-oriented problems. Many feel that the intellectual challenge of confronting issues in this realm is every bit as stimulating as devoting time to pure scholarship. Besides, there are few, if any, members of the Institute who plan to divorce themselves from pure scholarship--they merely want to vary their activities to achieve the maximum intellectual satisfaction.
The most engaging feature of the Institute, as far as its top officials are concerned, is the opportunity and support it will give--for really the first time--to members of the Harvard community who wish to deal in a fairly formalized way with pressing future problems of policy, while remaining at Harvard.
Neustadt tells a story in this vein. Last summer two members of the Economics Department were investigating the problem that would arise when the cost of living rose in 1967 with relation to the maintenance of the now-defunct guideposts. It wasn't really a long-range problem like ones the Institute wants to confront. But the point of the story, which Neustadt tells with great relish, is "that Washington--a couple of Cabinet officials, a White House aide, and a leading government economist--came to us. Harvard didn't have to go running to them." He adds, with a smile, "That's the way we like it.