I WAS TAUGHT, before I came to Harvard, that this is wrong. I learned that situation ethics have only a limited value--that they can be applied only where there is not a great, compelling moral reason on the other side of the fence. Although I learned to be careful not to apply my own standards to every case--to be tolerant of other views, which the vast majority of the time do not involve great moral principles--I was taught that occasions still arise when it is simply wrong to ignore the basic moral principles. The most basic of these, and the most often flouted, is that the feelings, well-being and lives of other people count, and that it is wrong not to consider them. Not unwise or disadvantageous--wrong.

Harvard has tried to teach me otherwise, but it has not succeeded. I still believe that a sliding scale of ethical values can only slide so far before it runs into unpleasant human realities: that people who lose their jobs do not eat, that people who lose their homes suffer, that people who are forced to live under despotic governments cannot enjoy even the most basic human liberties. But Harvard, for all its professed concern with proper behavior, does not act as if it recognizes these facts. Tied up in professional ethics, it ignores human ethics.

President Bok and Dean Rosovsky and all their sundry other deans and counsels and vice presidents must recognize these distinctions, for they are intelligent people. But they ignore them; they have found it too easy to merge themselves with the great immortal institution they work for, to forget the most basic part of their humanity, which is their own mortality, and that of those around them. That is why, when they see opposition, they immediately view it as a threat to order, never thinking it might be an appeal to simple human virtue. They are sadly convinced that they can serve the institution only by taking on its values and beliefs, and that there is no room for humanitarianism, other than that defined by the narrow limits of their bureaucracy. The optimistic man or woman must pray that they are wrong.

I WAS ALSO taught, before I came to Harvard, that there is a simple way to deal with ethical conflicts. When you come across a problem that your own beliefs dictate must be solved in one fashion, and that the demands of your position or situation dictate must be solved in another, you search for compromise--a way to serve both your masters. If you cannot find it, you leave, because your own conscience is more important than the life of an institution, which has no conscience.

President Bok and his colleagues obviously have not met such a dilemma yet, because they have neither compromised nor left. They do not yet see the contradictions between the roles of the institution and the individual--or if they do, they show no signs of recognizing them. This failing would be enough for many people to conclude that these men are beyond hope, that they will never begin to lead this university in a more humane, understanding manner--that they have sacrificed themselves to Harvard completely. I do not, however, believe this is true.

I am convinced that what John Steinbeck wrote, in a very different context, applies to Harvard as well. Writing about Cannery Row in California, he said:

Its inhabitants are, as the man once said, "whores, pimps, gamblers and sons-of-bitches," by which he meant Everybody. Had the man looked through another peephole he might have said "Saints and angels and martyrs and holy men," and he would have meant the same thing.

There are enough sons-of-bitches here to convince me of the first part; the latter is a matter of faith. The way to prove that faith, though, is to force these men and women to recognize the burdens of their own mortality. Not, however, by violence or building takeovers--those will only bring the sons-of-bitches to the fore. Instead we must face them quietly but resolutely, showing them the frequent cruelty of what they do, never letting them forget that there are other, more severe judges of their actions. We must haunt them with their own humanity.

MY CHANCE to haunt them is almost over. It took me three-and-a-half years here to come to grips with my own mortality, to grow comfortable with the thought that Harvard could not make me over into something I had once desired, but now fear. I like to think it has not changed me, but that, of course, is foolish--I have gained so much from my time here, from the people I have met and the lessons I have learned, occasionally from professors. I cannot be bitter. Still, I am anxious about what may happen to so many people here--the students and administrators and professors that this institution runs--who have grown so accustomed to cold hearts.

And so I am reduced to hope. Not so much for myself, because my future is not so important. I am not a revolutionary, nor a poet; I will not change the world. I simply plan to stay in it for a while and--comfortable in the thought--soon be gone. But Harvard will be here long after that, still forging the community of educated men and women, still taking in the minds of its students and bending them to face a world of forlorn ideals and dismal sciences. My hope, and my prayer, is that it will at least leave them their souls.