Harvard professors also serve the government without forsaking academia for Washington, as consultants and through various research contracts. At Harvard this has resulted in the invention of napalm in Mallinckrodt laboratory and the origination of the electronic battlefield by Professors Kaysen and Kistiakowsky. Many students are familiar with this sort of involvement of natural scientists in war research, but fewer realize that the same kind of complicity exists in the social sciences. An outstanding example of the latter is Samuel P. Huntington, who justified the practice of "forced-draft urbanization" in Vietnam. In the July 1968 issue of Foreign Affairs, Huntington explained that the National Liberation Front held the "good Maoist expectation that by winning the support of the rural population it could eventually isolate and overwhelm the cities," and that the NLF would "remain a powerful and effective force which cannot be dislodged from its constituency so long as its constituency exists." But the guerillas would be unable to resist the "modernizing instruments of bombs and artillery" which are "largely, if not exclusively [responsible for] the movement of the population into the cities." Thus, "if the 'direct application of mechanical and conventional power' takes place on such a massive scale as to produce a massive migration from countryside to city, the basic assumptions underlying the Maoist doctrine of revolutionary warfare no longer operate." Huntington's theory has not been borne out by subsequent events, but it did force more than ten million Indochinese to become refugees.

Until he left the Government Department in 1969, Kissinger himself was an excellent example of an academic in a consultant role. According to a 1967 issue of Congressional Quarterly, his International Seminar received almost $500,000 in CIA funding between 1960 and 1966. This money was used to bring members of the elites of Third World nations into Kissinger's seminar. Kissinger was also a consultant to the State Department, and in 1966. This money was used to bring members of the elites of Third World nations into Kissinger's seminar. Kissinger was also a consultant to the State Department, and in 1966 made a secret trip to South Vietnam in this capacity.

Harvard Links

But the most important of the Harvard-Washington connections are not necessarily formal ones. As former President Nathan M. Pusey '28 observed in his 1965 report to the University.

Much of the relationship between Harvard and the government is a continuing and informal process of consultation; it is hard to distinguish between discussion that go on between professors and government official in a Littauer seminar room or at a scholarly meeting from those that go on where a professor is formally serving as a consultant in a government office.

In Cambridge it is often hard to tell where the University stops and government begins. Much of Harvard's influence comes through personal friendships and working relationships developed over the years between men who flew from the campus to Washington to private foundations and back again.

Although there are a few radical critics on the Harvard faculty, they are hired but rarely, and almost never given tenure. Harvard lines up consistently on the side of the established social order. To find out why this is so, one should begin by looking at some of the seven members of the Harvard Corporation, Harvard's highest governing body.

President Bok, who serves on the Corporation ex officio, is the scion of the Curtis publishing fortune. George Putnam, the treasurer, comes from an ancient New England banking family and holds directorships in banks, mutual funds and insurance companies. Hugh Calkins, a Cleveland corporate lawyer, is a director of the Brown & Sharp manufacturing company and is a member of the Council on Foreign Relations. (The CFR is an organization of important businessmen, university faculty and former government officials, and has great influence in the formulation of U.S. foreign policy. If the first 82 names on a list proposed by President Kennedy for staffing his State Department, 63 were members of the CFR.) Francis Burr is a partner in the old, gilt-edged law firm of Ropes & Gray, and director of several mutual funds and banks. Charles Slichter is a Professor of Physics at the University of Illinois, one of the top ten university defense contractors. As a member of the research board of the graduate college at Illinois, and as a science advisor to the White House, Slichter know every aspect of the scramble for Defense Department research and development funds.

Harvard's Interest

It is in the interest of the Corporation to side against the non-white, female, and poor. Systematically, they serve the interests of those who are white, male, and rich--that is, the interests of U.S. capitalists.

This does not mean that the presidents of the Fortune 500 meet in a board room and order the Corporation to sponsor a lot of war research. It does not mean that the Corporation calls up the head of the Personnel Office and tells him to discriminate against women and minorities. The process is more subtle than that, but is effective nonetheless. The material interests and general social position of the members of the Corporation lead them to hold certain values and opinions consistent with the interests of big business. They hire administrators who hold office only so long as they share those values and effectively serve those interests. In turn, the administration watches over the faculty--the administration's recent attacks on the independence of the Afro-American Studies Department are a good example of what happens to faculty members who stand in opposition to the Corporation.

In short, Harvard consistently serves the capitalist system because it is in fact a part of that system. It is connected to those who rule U.S. society in a thousand different ways. The fact that Henry Kissinger holds the post of Secretary of State is one of many examples of this interconnection, and one that is underscored by his visit to Harvard this afternoon. Everyone opposed to Kissinger, the Harvard Corporation and the system that encompasses them both should demonstrate against him.

Peter S. Hogness '76 is a member of the Radcliffe-Harvard chapter of the New American Movement, and was assisted in writing this by other chapter members.

Harvard consistently serves the capitalist system because it is in fact a part of that system. It is connected to those who rule U.S. society in a thousand different ways.