This is not to call Dr. Ellsberg hypocritical. Speaking here at Harvard last November 17, he admitted his own uncertainty about the meaning of his new role. Perhaps, he suggests, he is unwittingly serving the administration's cause. After all, he once thought the war was right. Can he be absolutely certain of the rightness of his new stance?

We thus wish to prevent the enshrining of Dr. Ellsberg, but we do not deny his achievement, nor the value of his advocating resistance, nor his suitability, in many ways, as a role-model for young activists. His action was clearly inspiring and unites three themes of the American crisis. The themes are confession, sacrifice, and initiative.

Almost more inspiring than the release of the Pentagon Papers is Dr. Ellsberg's confession that, having passed the age of 40, he found he had wasted his life. Such an admission to one's self, much less to an admiring audience, is an act of courage; one must not forget the years of effort Daniel Ellsberg had endured in validating his passport to the circle of corrupt power. A Harvard man, a former member of the Crimson and a president of the Advocate, a successful fellow of the Center for International Affairs, and currently a research fellow further up the Charles, at MIT, Ellsberg has been consultant to Henry Kissinger '50 and director of the 1969 Rand Project for the development of alternative plans for Vietnam which were presented to the National Security Council. Still, he saw his energy and intellect employed for wasteful, immoral, and inhuman ends. For any figure now in power who helped foster the Vietnam catastrophe, this recognition is the first step towards liberation; in order to create a future, one must first face up to his past.

Ellsberg's sacrifice has already been mentioned. There is, we must realize, no particular certainly that a McGovern-like president will come to power soon. There is no skirting the fact that Ellsberg may go to jail. Clearly, he's foresworn large categories of lucrative government work. Finally, the adulation of student crowds is notoriously short-lived. If he gave up nothing else, Ellsberg at least gave up security for pressure, certainly for uncertainty. For the time being, at least, he has given up the vagaries of academic freedom for the burden of academic responsibility. That seems like little to outsiders, but to an entrenched academic such sacrifice is enormous. We should not ignore, not only what Ellsberg has given up, but what he certainly could have had. The "rewards" at the center of the web of power would have been considerable.

A final theme is initiative. It is somehow fitting that only by committing what may prove to be a felony could Ellsberg help release the documented truth of an immoral, unjust, and illegally pursued war. For 26 years, America has supported an increasingly intense display of inhumanity. Only civil disobedience could reveal the facts of our involvement to the public, facts which, unsurprisingly, are still denied in much public reaction to the Pentagon Papers.

Here is a measure not only of the initiative required to get at the truth, but also of the basis for the effort required to get the truth acknowledged. The American public is so removed from political decision-making that the truth could be denied them for two and a half decades. Nixon did not judge his constituency unperceptively in invading Laos on a weekend when football scores dominated the headlines. Nixon relies on the gap between the people and the center of power. Covering up the consequential alienation becomes his most difficult task.

There is another motif running through the Ellsberg affair, the motif of the Harvard Man, of intelligence delivered in the service of power. Ellsberg stepped forward and removed himself from the past; while not absolving himself of guilt, he at least has attempted repentence. It is better that he should self-consciously but actively atone than atrophy amidst his own regrets.

Now, what about the men to whom Ellsberg gave service? What about the men who helped fashion the Vietman quagmire? What about the Kennedys, Bundy, and Kissinger, et al? Does their involvement in the war have something to indicate about Harvard?

Is Harvard's apparent role in directing the war an innocent string of striking coincidences, or does Harvard actively prevent potential activists and resisters like Ellsberg from stepping out of the web of power? Does Harvard suppress confession? Does Harvard ignore sacrifice? Does Harvard repress initiative? What could resistance mean in the context of Harvard? Why does alienation, rather than activism, dominate the life of this university?

III

Harvard now has four vice-presidents whose combined salaries would pay off the undergraduate housing debt. The administration has attempted to charge rent to the wives of house tutors, and has considered charging rent to the tutors themselves. The costs of the building projects undertaken by Harvard (e.g., the science center) have risen astronomically, while the uses of these buildings have been called increasingly into question. Meanwhile, Phillips Brooks House, which serves high school students, disadvantaged youngsters, prisoners, and minority communities in the Cambridge-Boston area is scraping for money. All this is accompanied by skyrocketing tuition and the administration's refusal to relieve that burden with Yale plan-type loans.

These are only a few of the more tangible issues. One also might contemplate the dubious legitimacy of the CRR as now constituted, Harvard's failure to act decisively on educational policy reform, and the adoption of 2.5 to 1 as an acceptable level of sexual equality. There is no shortage of debatable issues and no-evidence of effective popular debate. Do undergraduates enjoy being manipulated, or may we assume that something deeper underlies a prevailing malaise?

It is remarkable that a university in which government is invariably one of the top three concentrations by enrollment has no student-organized body to collectively act on the undergraduates' behalf. The unremarkable reason for this phenomenon is the suspicion on the part of a great number of the students that any such union would be taken over by young men and women on the rise, undergrads who, through conciliation and compromise, would hope to prime themselves for future office in the "real world" of opportunism and hypocrisy. No one willingly subscribes to the legitimacy of such representation.

However, there is a deeper implication expressed in such suspicions. Those who raise these objections to student unions apparently expect that they, themselves, would not stop a takeover by opportunists. Either they suspect their own unwillingness or inability to make the effort, or they believe that not enough individuals will feel as strongly as they to make a united and effective stand. No one believes he or she will take on the burden, and, consequently, no one believes anyone else will shoulder it either.

Now, the basis of these doubts appears more clearly. We Harvard men and women--indeed, all American students--despite the endless resources at our disposal, have been educated to respond to the social system passively or to participate only in support of traditional goals which, of course, results in much the same thing.