II

There have probably been few men who have come to the Corporation with their symbolic roles more clearly defined that Calkins' was last year.

Ever since Senior Fellow Thomas Lamont died in April, 1967, the Corporation had been hunting for a new member. The selection often takes a year or two, but it usually begin early enough so that when the oldest Fellow resigns at the traditional age of 70, his replacement is ready.

Lamont's death, however, caught the Corporation without a nominee. For most of last year, the Corporation limped along at three-Fellow strength, since Fellow William Marbury was sick in Baltimore. Several of the Fellows offered public speculation during the year on what kind of a man the new Fellow would be. Kane said that maybe the Corporation might add a scientist or doctor. Another member said that someone from the West might be good.

The Fellows' speculation hinted at an idea that must have been obvious to anyone watching the Corporation last spring. Harvard did not just need another Fellow member to beef up the Corporation's membership. It needed a new kind of Fellow to offset the Corporation's Eastern-financier image, which was already coming under attack last year.

The Corporation's members must also have realized that Lamont's successor gave them a rare chance to fight their image problems. Lamont was a Wall Street banker, director of the Morgan Guaranty Trust. Compared to him, almost any new members the Corporation chose would look like a step away from the Eastern financial establishment. The only possible exceptions would be Rockefellers or Mellons, and the Corporation reportedly offered the post to David Rockfeller. But if he did get the offer, he turned it down, and the Corporation eventually turned to Hugh Calkins.

In his initial publicity, Calkins appeared to be a surprisingly long step away from Lamont and his Wall Street banks. He was from Cleveland, not from New York or Boston. In his early 40's, he was by far the youngest member of the Corporation. And his record on the Cleveland School Board gave him strong credentials in standard liberal causes like improving ghetto education.

CALKINS was also grossly out of place on the interlocking-directorate charts that some radical students had prepared to show how the Corporation dominates American business. Calkins' only tangible business involvement was his role as director of a Rhode Island manufacturing company. He later said he took the job to help a friend whose company was in trouble.

But if Calkins was a symbolic change in the venerable Harvard Corporation, his first few months in office offered little concrete evidence of steps away from traditional Corporation policy.

He gave a speech in October calling for a new foundation to channel investment funds to struggling ghetto businesses. But he immediately said that he agreed with the standing Corporation policy of keeping Harvard's money where it would bring the best return.

In speeches and in private talks, Calkins has said that the Army should get out of Vietnam. But he also says that the Corporation will not take a formal stand against the war; and it was his Corporation that SDS accused of distorting the Faculty's ROTC resolution.

Calkins also tried to make himself available to students. On his Monday trips into Cambridge for Corporation meetings, he would usually arrange talks with undergraduate groups. He talked with students and explained his classically liberal views on the war, on dissent, or running the University.

But the more he talked, the more students began to realize that the young Calkins' liberalism was not very much different from the things the old Corporation said.

Harvard was still not going to tell the country to end the war. Harvard would not pour its money into Roxbury or pull its money out of military-supply industries. Calkins was not going to invite a few of his student friends to sit with him on the Corporation.

There has been one big change, of course. Calkins has taken the trouble to explain the policies to students, even if the policies themselves are unchanged. For students who never really believed that the Corporation was a functioning cog in the military-industrial complex, Calkins' effort was enough.