Better channels of communication between and among the administration, the governing boards, faculties, students and alumni, are rather plainly needed. There is need also to reexamine the method of selection and tenure of the governing boards; the nature and extent of their responsibilities; and the relations between them, assuming that the historic bicameral structure is found to have continuing merit. The re-examination should also encompass the issue whether Harvard should create another central body,primarily representing faculty and students, to work with the governing boards and, if so, how it should be constituted and what role it should play with respect to various issues.
While, as stated at the outset, we had intended to develop our own proposals on these and other subjects relating to the central government of the University, we have come to the view that it would be wiser if the Overseers and the Fellows would participate in the similar efforts being made by the various faculties. Consequently, we recommend the early creation of a University-wide Committee on Governance which can serve as an appropriate form for the discussion of proposals affecting the structure of Harvard's central institutions. While the Committee should contain representatives of the faculties and of the governing boards, it would not have power to bind them. We would hope rather that the members of the Committee would maintain sufficiently close contact with their constituencies that, if a consensus could be reached, the faculties would be likely to respond with favor and the governing boards to approve.
This necessarily implies that each of the committee members will attempt to frame proposals that can reasonably be expected to gain wide-spread agreement among all interested groups and not simply to advance plans that might appeal to a narrow majority.
We would not be discharging our responsibilities if we simply recommended such a Committee without presenting our thoughts as to its composition. We have seriously considered the proposition that each of the faculties should fill an equal number of seats. Such an apportionment would dramatize that the proposed Committee on University Governance is not, and cannot be a representative body in any formal sense but is instead the most convenient forum for developing proposals which reasonable men with widely differing perspectives, have agreed deserve the most serious attention by the entire University.
On the other hand, we think the larger faculties should each have the right to fill at least four seats to begin to do justice to the diverse currents of opinion that exist within each, and we fear that if each faculty had that many seats the group would be so large as to be unable to engage in the process of mutual accommodation that must go forward if a satisfactory institutional structure is to be designed.
Consequently, it appears wiser to temper the principle of equality so as to give the larger faculties a better opportunity to reflect their extraordinary diversity. Accordingly, we are inclined to recommend that the Faculty of Arts and Sciences fill six seats in order to represent adequately the undergraduate and postgraduate programs, the three large professional faculties of Law, Medicine and Business Administration fill four each, and the five smaller faculties-Design, Divinity, Education, Public Administration and Public Health-send two members each. In addition, we propose that three Overseers, two Fellows, a representative of the Radcliffe Trustees and a representative of the Associated Harvard Alumni serve on the Committee: these must be willing to devote the large amount of time that membership will require.
(Editor's note: Although the Friendly Report suggested allotting representation on the committee according to the size of the various faculties, the full Board of Overseers gave President Pusey complete discretion in establishing the new committee. On the advice of the Deans, Pusey decided that equal representation would provide a smaller and more efficient body which could begin more promptly.)
While we believe that each of the faculties should determine the manner in which it will select its delegates to the Committee on University Governance, we wish to make it clear that students, as well as faculty, should be chosen to serve. We would urge that no faculty should be without student representation and also that, at least in the case of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, one non-tenured officer of instruction should be included.
While we have no illusion that our formula is the only feasible one, we do not believe that a great deal of time should be spent on lengthy debate concerning "representation" on the Committee. As we have already emphasized, the Committee will not have the power of decision; the weight to be given its proposals by the faculties and the governing boards will depend on the extent to which they accommodate the interests of faculty, students, administration, alumni and the larger society in a fair way and meet the longer range needs of the University as a whole. This task will be difficult and time-consuming enough without being postponed by protracted discussion of preliminary details.
We realize there will be sentiment that, at least so far as concerns the governing boards and the central administration, our committee should make its own proposals. But these matters are of concern not simply to the Overseers but to the entire University community and would inevitably figure in recommendations of Working Group Three of the Committee of Fifteen and similar committees of other faculties, students and alumni. We therefore think it best that the task of making recommendations on these subjects also should be channeled to an overall committee although we are eager to give our tentative views and to render all possible assistance to it.
Moreover we would suppose that in matters relating to the composition of the governing boards the Committee would accord particular weight to the views of their representatives because of their familiarity with the subject and their sense of what will be acceptable.
IV
NO REFORM of central institutional machinery alone will be sufficient immediately to reestablish the high sense of mutual trust and confidence that formerly prevailed at Harvard. However, we are convinced that an honest and open process of discussion of this, along with the discussions by the various faculties on matters within their jurisdiction, is indispensable to that end, and therefore that this work must proceed with a sense of urgency. We call upon all members of the Harvard community to join it.
We call on them also, faculty, administrators, students and members of the governing boards, to search their own consciences to see whether they are performing consistently with their own concepts of what Harvard should be. Restoration of the spirit Harvard had only a few years ago depends not only on new institutional arrangements but on rededication of teachers to their primary task of teaching and of students to their primary task of learning.
It depends also on a willingness in case of dispute to hear the other side, to be convinced of error at least occasionally, and, when not so convinced, to recognize that a difference of opinion may be honest and not mere hypocrisy. It entails a corresponding duty on the part of decision-makers to hear, to discuss and to explain. We recognize the burdens this creates for faculties and members of the governing boards, but we think that, at least until new institutions can be created and placed in successful operation, it is a burden that must be cheerfully born in the interest not merely of reviving the Harvard that was but of establishing an even better one.