Bay wants to "replace political systems with concepts of human need and human development as the ultimate value frameworks for our political analysis."

"I am convinced that our profession will never help us to advance from our wasteful, cruel, pluralist pseudo-politics in the direction of justice and humane politics until we" do this, Bay said.

This intellectual ferment clearly reaches far beyond Vietnam. The practical problem of the war has triggered discussions of a more philosophical bent.

It sounds remarkably like political theory, a beast thought to be extinct in the modern world. In Bay's article, we read that "the proper purpose of politics is identical with the proper purpose of medicine: to postpone death and reduce suffering."

The need for a revival of political theory is explicitly recognized by Engler when he said that "The bulk of political science abdicates from responding to the crying need for a new theory of democracy."

The long neglected pursuit of political theory may find a new and vibrant meaning in today's intellectual world.

This is not to say that academicians have taken refuge in philosophy. Quite the opposite; the concern for theory sparked by the Vietnam quandary has also given rise to the activist intellectual.

GRADUATE STUDENTS traditionally have been cautious in their political activities. They will not risk alienating faculty members whose recommendations could mean the difference between success and failure as a political scientist.

This spring, the graduate students in the government department have created and staffed a speakers bureau in order to carry their views on the war to clubs, churches, and other civic groups in the Harvard vicinity.

Primo Vannicelli, a government graduate student, said that since there had been no strong opposition in the faculty students were leaving the refuge of the lecturn for the influence of the pulpit, the podium, and the soap box.

There are now about 25 graduate students working on the project. "The current direction of our foreign policy has made it our responsibility as experts to speak out in a public forum," Vannicelli said.

Activism is one sign of the increasing ferment in political science. Feelings of guilt and responsibility have made this ferment a particularly poignant issue for political scientists.

But the issues of morality in Vietnam have infringed upon the other disciplines too. Physical science is exemplary of an area where moral issues have imposed themselves upon unsuspecting individuals.

Triggering the A-Bomb

Scientists are deeply involved in the war effort. Since World War II, their contributions to military science have not been viewed in a moral sense; but Vietnam has challenged that. Scientists have become increasingly perplexed by the growing gap between personal morality and public service.