Does the very act of publicly judging the social life of men and women younger than ourselves, separate us from them to such an extent that we ought to stop our pronouncements?

What would be the consequence of a policy that claimed no expertise in the prevention of drug traffic and and emphasized education and care?

What is to be said to the black whose personal sense of order has come loose because everyone wishes him to embrace "blackness" and he is afraid and wishes to be left alone?

What does one say to the individual black who must wrest his own sense of power from the white man?

What is to be said to a white student who is on the rack because we adults have left him a guilt derived from living in an incredioly violent, racist, and cruel world?

I remember a phrase from a Lowell poem that had him complaining that when he found himself troubled and looking around for some way out, all he saw were "useless things." The task for the Harvard administration has to do with throwing out those useless things by responding to that sensibility sometimes illuminated for us by a single line.

The trouble now is that no one is sure what people are supposed to be learning and how the emotional and poltical dimensions fit in with teaching and receptivity to it. I have a hunch Harvard is at one of those his torical turning points and something new will emerge from the mix of classical and modern Harvard that will include the quest for new formulations of knowledge and the yearning to act out of conscience.

The individual in an institution is already within a setting that is contra dictory to his total self, and will not satisly his every characteristic wish and want. What must happen then, I imagine, is that we will all weave a crazy-quilt pattern of influence on the social, cultural, and political life of the university, which will take shape through the policies we support or oppose. The pattern is probably woven along certain lines. The recurring questions for the man who sits behind the desk are: What are those lines? What is their substance and form and how shall I discover this? Who will help me understand the kind of university we need in contemporary America?

At Harvard we find a concord of sensibilities that call for some degree of excellence, seriousness about one's part in the enterprise and uncertainty about Harvard when it is a system. We all have heard of the Harvard arrogance, but I think much more characteristic is the antithesis, the questioning of this place by people who have been here a long while, and by those who have just come. I think this questioning is the way to insure that the individual and political questions at Harvard will be met with passion and reason. Perhaps the suspense created by the question will produce an answer.