Changes of this nature--coupled with the increase in informal instruction through Independent studies, seminars and fourth-course pass-failing programs--might seem to indicate the Ford has radically new ides on College teaching methods. He is basically, however, a traditionalist. He believes in the value of systematic, highly organized instruction and the lecture system. Ford once described his idea of Harvard development as a process of "doing more of some things without doing less of others." This philosophy seeks to take into account a diverse student body, and it also applies to course offerings, fields of concentration, Faculty chairs, and General Education courses.
GENERAL versus specialized education constitutes a deep and long-ranging question for Ford, who as Dean works simultaneously with the problems of both the College and the Graduate School. Working through the Faculty, he has tried to define the relationship between undergraduate and graduate education.
Dean Buck's attempt at such a definition in the 1940's is best seen in the General Education Program and in its attempts to pull Faculty and Curriculum away form specialization and the graduate school to create a non-specialized college education covering the heritage of Western thought. Dean Bundy in the 1950's emphasized the Honors Program and created Sophomore Standing and Freshman Seminars--steps towards specialization.
Ford has continued both traditions. The Gen Eddebates of 1964-65 resulted in the reaffirmation of the principle of General Education to his satisfaction. At the same time the Faculty, also with Ford's support, substituted a more specialized Expository Writing course for the old composition requirement and permitted creation of more advanced courses to satisfy basic Gen Ed requirements. This liberalization of the Gen Ed rules, Ford points out, permits students with better training to take advanced Gen Ed courses, while students with weaker high school training still have more basic lower-level courses.
Through the Committee on General Education, through Harvard's research centers in the Social Sciences and through the Program for Science in Harvard College, Ford has sought to integrate undergraduate teaching with advanced Faculty research. To him, there is no basic irreconciliability between the most advanced research and teaching in the College. "Harvard's 'problem centers' have been valuable in bringing different disciplines together and then leading to undergraduate courses." The number of basic Gen Ed courses has doubled this year. But Ford is quick to add that there is a distinction between an inter-disciplinary approach and an anti-disciplinary one. "A student still needs to have discipline upon which to branch out--it is not a matter of tossing away the catalogue," he says.
STUDENT activists sometimes think Ford is either inconsistent, or simply shrewd and calculating: on the one hand, he is generally receptive to thoughtful student suggestions for educational changes; but at the same time he objects to giving students representation on committees when it would serve no purpose. "If students' ideas are relevant to a committee's studies," Ford says, "I suppose they should be invited to sit with the group and discuss the issues." But he goes no further. The Faculty, not students, hold the delegated authority of the Corporation, Food believes. During the squabbles over election procedure for the Student Faculty Advisory Council last fall Ford remarked that sometimes students care more about parliamentary bickering than about reaching substantive objectives.
In his unhappier moments, Ford sees an ugliness in society and the University which was not there several years ago. The horrors in Vietnam and the violence in this country are not unrelated. Exactly one year ago at Class Day, Ford stated that America should withdraw form Vietnam. Later, in the fall, he thought the physical tactics used in the Dow demonstration here were wrong. This spring he called the violence at Columbia a dissaster that has done irreparable damage to students and faculty. The ugliness has spread to Harvard, Ford thinks. "A spirit of better humor existed in Faculty discussion several years ago," he says. "Then, one person would not question the morality of another who held a different point of view."
This firm belief in the traditional university of tolerance and individual expression does not keep Ford aloof from any students. After the Dow protest, for instance, he devoted four days to hearing the opinions of students, junior faculty, and faculty on the pros and cons of punishing the demonstrators before he formulated his own position. In a typical fashion, he maintained an orderly list of the arguments on each side. In the end, he favored the most lenient possible punishment that would also deter a recurrence.
One problem which plagued Ford after Dow was the widespread attitude that Harvard's Administration was monolithic and, presumable, a supporter of the Establishment. His debate on Vietnam with Professor Oscar Handlin this spring was designed, in part, to demonstrate that no such uniformity exists among University officers on any political question.
LIKE HIS predecessors, Ford remains an adademic in an administrative role, teaching almost his full share of undergraduate and graduate courses each year and supervising a number of dissertations. When he steps down as Dean after two more years--and he does plan to resign his position when Pusey retires at 65--he will probably return to fulltime teaching. "A new president should not have an inherited dean, and anyway, one man should not fill the position for much more than seven or eight years because he gets increasingly bogged down in outside commitments," Ford says.
Ford has reportedly turned down the presidency of prestigious universities in the past, and there is no reason to think he will leave. Harvard for another administrative job. Ford's recent appointment to the McLean Chair in Ancient and Modern History deeply moved him. It is Harvard's oldest and most prestigious history chair and was formerly held by Crane Brinton, Ford's Ph.D. advisor in the late 1940's.
When Ford does leave the Dean's office, he will probably have given more long-range direction to Harvard's educational system than any of his more outspoken predeccessors. He has sought to reconcile growing demands for greater specialization and advancement with the need for general education. He has operated within Harvard's traditional system of government to bring change and flexibility to a student body with changing views and varied background.
Ford's courses are noted for his dry delivery. But students who paid attention to his lectures found them thorough, fascinating, and even witty. His Administration, like his course treatment, may be sometimes dry in tone but never in content.