THE HARTMAN CASE: 1970-1976

June 1970--With his appointment as assistant professor of City Planning about to expire, Chester W. Hartman '57 formally requests a review of the decision not to rehire him, charging that his academic freedom has been violated.

June 1972--After two years of dispute with Hartman over a review mechanism, the GSD faculty names an investigatory panel of five non-GSD professors.

October 21, 1975--The Hartman Review Committee's report, distributed in September, is referred to the GSD's Academic Policy Committee.

May 26, 1976--The GSD faculty is scheduled to debate the policy committee's report, completed in late April.

A faculty panel at the Graduate School of Design has recommended that the GSD faculty take no "remedial action" toward Chester W. Hartman '58, a former assistant professor of City Planning whose charges that the school did not rehire him for personal and political reasons remain unresolved after six years of haggling and investigation.

The GSD's Academic Policy Committee, which completed its 32-page report in late April and is now circulating it confidentially to principals in the case, rejects Hartman's assertion that his academic freedom was violated and concludes that the Department of City and Regional Planning had "sufficient legitimate grounds" for not renewing the outspoken junior faculty member's appointment.

The GSD faculty will consider the panel's recommendations in a special meeting May 26, seven months after it asked the five-member policy panel to review the just-released 300-page report of an ad hoc University committee that has studied Hartman's charges for over three years.

First Non-Hiring Study

The report of this University panel--known as the Hartman Review Committee--represented Harvard's first attempt to systematically study a non-hiring case. It examined a junior faculty member's right to criticize his tenured colleagues, the role of "subjective" elements in hiring decisions, and the obligations of a department to grant "due process" to those it considers for non-tenured positions.

While the first review committee reported that it was "not prepared to assert" that Hartman's academic freedom had been abridged, it also found that Hartman had "legitimate" procedural and substantive grievances.

The review committee criticized several administrators and faculty involved in the 1969 decision not to rehire Hartman. Its report detailed the school's reliance on "grossly inadequate" and "execrable" procedures for considering reappointments, incompetence in the Department, a "failure of administrative oversight," "the intrusion of subjective elements" into the GSD decision, and a "troublesome" role played in the non-reappointment by then-President Nathan M. Pusey '28.

It also attacked the GSD's former dean and several past and present members of its faculty for offering only partial cooperation to its investigation. The review panel reported that "many" of its five members had a "lingering doubt" as to whether the current GSD dean, Maurice D. Kilbridge, was "as candid and forthcoming as he might have been."

The facts and issues of the Hartman case are exceedingly complex, rooted in the student uprisings here in the late sixties and in the power struggles and curriculum disputes at the long-troubled GSD.

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