Chapter II

"American Presidential campaigns rarely rise above the level of polite name-calling and Madison Avenue sloganeering."

WITH THAT PRONOUNCEMENT The Crimson launched its coverage of the 1960 campaign. Since 1917, Crimson editors had scattered through the country every fourth year, covering conventions, primaries, trends and candidates. The politics of the paper had shifted from conservative to liberal in the space of a few decades, and no longer did Crimson editors support the Republican ticket. John F. Kennedy '40 was a former Crimson editor, the holder of a recent Harvard honorary degree, and the sponsor of the bill to abolish the loyalty oath for NDEA loan applicants, which The Crimson has ardently supported. Although Kennedy's connection with the paper had been tenuous, at best--he never made much of his membership on the Business Board--Crimson editors felt a sentimental attachment to him. In comparison with the other candidates before the Convention in Los Angeles, and in stark contrast to the Republican standard bearer, the young Massachusetts Senator and Overseer seemed the only logical choice. As we see in its endorsement editorial, The Crimson made its choice for President perfectly clear in the Fall of 1960. The campaign coverage was extensive, ranging from peripatetic coverage of the candidates on tour to parodies of the Kennedy-Nixon debates by J. Lee Auspitz '63, who assured readers that Kennedy would pay for the tunnel to the Vatican with his own money.

David Halberstam '55, the former Managing Editor, has pointed out the weaknesses of the Kennedy approach to foreign policy. The "best and the brightest," the Harvard professors and the liberal intellectuals who made up Kennedy's Kitchen Cabinet, often lacked practical experience and understanding of Realpolitik. But the bad fruit of the Kennedy era did not become manifest until long after Camelot had passed away, and The Crimson of the 1960-63 period ran a love affair with the White House.

Kissinger Calls Crisis

Soviet Miscalculation

read a headline during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Crimson backed the President in his execution of foreign policy, and so did the associate professor of Government, Dr. Kissinger. In the days when his name was not a household word, and his consulting with the government was on a far less grand scale than his current employment. Henry A. Kissinger '50 was a frequent topic in The Crimson. "Our sincerity is not at issue, our competence might be," Kissinger told a reporter about the nuclear test ban treaty. And almost every week at one point. Kissinger bombarded the paper with notices that he was cancelling his subscription because of The Crimson's inaccuracy. His letter writing campaign seemed to be his favorite hobby in the days before he worked his way up the ladder to fame.

The Kennedy administration deprived Harvard of its senior dean, McGeorge Bundy of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. While Bundy was to go on to notoriety in his later career, his reputation as dean was high. The Faculty liked and admired him; in fact, they favored him over the President. The Memorial Church controversy had eroded much of Pusey's support, and Bundy's charismatic personality had naturally attracted support. So, when Bundy went to Washington to assume the post which Kissinger would hold not many years later, Pusey decided to assume the dean's office himself. After almost a year of Pusey's multiple officeholding, the paper began a weeklong series of editorials criticizing his stewardship, citing "a growing feeling among the Faculty that the President does not understand his University."

The week long attack, which began on April 23 of 1962, cited Pusey's performance in a number of issues, small and large, and urged, among other things, that he appoint a dean of the Faculty immediately. Although the language of the editorials seems mild in light of recent years, the University as a whole was shocked by their appearance, and the letters column was flooded with protests from Pusey's partisans ranging from the dean of Public Health to the acting preacher to the University. The tactic of an elongated criticism of Pusey's conduct in office has remained controversial over the past decade: shortly after the pieces appeared, however, he appointed a new dean.

The Crimson's affection for John F. Kennedy by no means extended to his younger brother. In the 1962 Senatorial election in Massachusetts, Edward M. Kennedy '54 ('56) ran in the Democratic Primary against State Attorney General, Edward McCormack, whom he defeated. In the final election, Kennedy was opposed by Republican George Cabot Lodge '50, now professor of Business Administration at Harvard, and Independent H. Stuart Hughes, Gurney-Professor of History. Kennedy soundly trounced both opponents, although his only experience to date had been as a dollar-a-year assistant district attorney in Middlesex County after passing his bar examination. Commending his honesty and dedication to principle. The Crimson endorsed Hughes. After the Kennedy victory, the paper editorialized:

The Crimson cannot join those newspapers across the state who today are expressing hope for Edward Kennedy's emergence as a good United States Senator. A few "right votes" in the Senate will not justify the abuses he has already perpetrated....

On Page One, Mark DeWolfe Howe predicted that Kennedy would make a poor Senator. The great legal thinker had worked for the Hughes campaign, and joined in the Harvard community's general low opinion of the new Senator.

DRUGS BEGAN TO ASSUME a new importance in society in the early Sixties, when they suddenly became the property of the respectable middle class. At Harvard, two denizens of William James Hall, Timothy Leary and Richard Alpert, were using the "mind-expanding" drug pscilocybin in experiments on students. Andrew L. Weil '64, now Andrew E. Weil M.D., was The Crimson's drug expert at the time even though he was also a Poonie--and did the bright, relentless, comprehensible reporting which led to the eventual banning of the experiments and termination of Leary and Alpert.

The controversy spilled over more than a year. The Faculty debated, and the Administration issued ukases. Elliot Perkins '23, the redoubtable Master of Lowell House, probably spoke for almost the entire Faculty when he said: "Undergraduates shouldn't be involved in this or any other damned experiments." The vote of the Faculty to ban drug experiments made Crimson headlines, and eventually led to the termination of Alpert's contract, when he illegally administered the drugs to students and left Cambridge during term time without permission--and without making arrangements for his classes. The Crimson had played a large role in exposing the goings-on in William James.

The Kennedy assassination brought to an end a Crimson era, and spelled the same numb disbelief and uncomprehending shock at Harvard which it caused all over the country. Although the paper remained liberal and Democratic, the war policies of the Johnson Administration caused increasing alienation among the editors. At Harvard, a small, left wing group called Tocsin gave way to a newer group called SDS, which became more militant as the war escalated and the Executive Branch increased the level of warfire without consent of Congress, or the people. In 1967, Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara was surrounded and detained by a group of students; punishments were handed out by the Administrative Board. Later, a recruiter for the Dow Chemical Company was held in a room in Pierce Hall against his will; here again, punishments were assessed on the students involved, and also on a large group of students who had signed a petition asking to be given equal blame with the actual perpetrators. The College was entering a dark period.