No doubt Afro, and other radical groups, will continue to all for divestiture of such stocks or for votes, acceptable to them in proxy fights like Campaign GM of a few years back. But if student response to Afro's strike call after the Southern University killings two weeks ago is any indicator, they will probably carry little weight with the Administration.
Even Afro's occupation of Massachusetts Hall last Spring, successful as it was in mobilizing student support, was carefully timed to coincide with a strike against the mining of Haiphong, as though student anger against American foreign policy was deemed necessary to stimulate student anger against Harvard's investments.
Little Defense Contracting
And Defense Department contracts, against which radical students might organize, are relatively unimportant here, totaling less than $3 million a year, and none of it classified research. By contrast there are a great deal of other government contracts, and approximately $60 million a year, or 30 per cent of the University's budget, is derived primarily from the National Institutes of Health and the National Science Foundation.
In 1949, by contrast, only 8 per cent of the University's budget was government contracts. Obviously Harvard is therefore much more vulnerable today to government threats to cut off such contracts. Last Spring, lobbying by Harvard and other colleges helped defeat a Congressional bill that would have cut off funds from colleges that were not entirely of one sex but didn't have sex blind admissions either.
It seems unlikely that Harvard can stave off such bills indefinitely unless, of courses, the Nixon Administration decides to go slow on such matters as a plaintive speech Wednesday by the head of HEW's Civil Rights division for example, seemed to suggest.
In any case, the extent of government money in Harvard's pocket probably means that the decisionmaking power not only on sex-blind admissions but also on such matters as increased faculty hiring of woman and blacks rests not only with the Administration, but also with the Federal government.
There are other aspects to the financial picture. Harvard issued its first revenue bonds over on Tuesday, Though Champion said Wednesday that the University has reached no decision on paying for future construction projects through more bond issues, it seems likely that bond financing may be a major new strategy, particularly if the University decides to go ahead with a $53 million Medical Area power plant.
Finally, this is the first financial report to use accounting system adopted in 1970 to make clear how much of the University's funds for future uses belongs to each department. Before the system's adoption, it was impossible to tell, and whatever income a department didn't spend immediately was reinvested for the whole University.
Under the told system, a dollar given to Harvard two hundred years ago was worth no more than a dollar given yesterday, become the older dollar's extra earnings had gone to the whole University, not to the specific purpose its donor had in mind.
The new unit system, which the University adopted under the threat of legal action, ends the advantage accorded "new money," What "Harvard and Money" refers to as "the dead hand of the past" is therefore likely to be stronger in the future: if Inter galactic Studies are in vogue in 2000, a dollar given to their department then will earn less than a dollar someone gives today to teach say ecology.
But this is only the system's first year, and no such trend is visible so far. Like so much else that Harvard's financial outlook seems to promise, the dead hand of the past may never actually appear