The caucuses were losing their power to vote in blocs, but the political nature of Faculty meetings was intensifying. The liberals were becoming more diffuse. The conservatives had officially stopped meeting before the convocation vote.

WHY the conservatives stopped meeting is almost a footnote in Faculty history. The caucus was beset with internal problems. Two of its leaders-Wolff and McCloskey-had suffered heart attacks. Prominent professors who might have replaced them had, instead, taken over the administration during the summer. Ernest R. May, professor of History, had become Dean of the College: Dunlop became Dean of the Faculty in January. James Q. Wilson, professor of Government, spent the year embroiled in the CRR.

Although the conservatives were the first to become a caucus, Maass explained that their objective was always to dissolve the caucus as soon as possible, and de-politicize the University.

The conservatives also faced the problem in the Fall of their "back-benchers" demanding that they take positions in favor of greater security for Faculty research. These were issues, many caucus members said, which evoked common sympathy, but appeared to be overtly reactionary.

Individual Faculty members from both the right and the left were beginning to stake out their own territories in Faculty meetings. Hilary Putnam was the SDS man on the Faculty, Martin L. Kilson, Professor of Government, was the Young People's Socialist League representative: Mendelsohn, a young political mover named Mark Ptashne, lecturer in Biology, and George Wald. Higgins Professor of Biology, became the Moratorium spokesmen.

The caucuses still exerted a subtle power (the Dean often called on caucus leaders to come up with compromise solutions to controversial problems) but the "prima donnas" of the Harvard Faculty (and in the last analysis, most Faculty members are) were speaking frequently and freely at these Fall Faculty meetings.

Though they still remained in firm control of the Faculty structure last year, all that the conservatives feared might happen to the Faculty had happened. The Faculty was: 1) politicized; 2) chaotic; 3) hostile.

And the absurdity and pathos of old-line Faculty members caught in the crunch of new Faculty politics is no better illustrated than in a confrontation last winter between Adam Yarmolinsky, professor of Law, and Ewart Guinier, chairman of the Afro-American Studies Department, before the Nieman Fellows.

Appearing on a panel discussion of the race question, Guinier gave an impassioned condemnation of white liberals who had sat idly by as blacks fought for black studies and other improvements in the University.

When he finished, an indignant Yarmolinsky rose from the audience and, seething with anger, told Guinier, "All that you have said in the last ten minutes makes you unfit to be a member of the Harvard Faculty." His pronouncement was met with scattered boos and hisses which only spurred Yarmolinsky's intensity. "Do you know who I am?" he shouted, "Do you know who I am?"

"No, who are you?" one Nieman called out.

"I'm Adam Yarmolinsky, Harvard University Professor of Law and President Kennedy's advisor on..."

The caucuses had brought a measure of civility to the new Faculty politics, but in the words of one professor. "Oh God, what a heavy price to pay." The repercussions of Faculty politics had spread throughout the University.

Expressing the change in the Faculty another way, a conservative caucus member noted, "When I see the wife of a colleague in the Square the first thing I ask myself is whether her husband is going to vote with us at the next Faculty meeting. What a colossal bore! Two years ago, I would be asking about his museum work, or his research."

THIS Spring, after fighting its way through the General Motors controversy, the Rights and Responsibilities resolution, and the nationwide student strike over Cambodia, the Faculty had grown weary of "crisis" politics.