The news office produced an impressive press packet of historical materials for the more than 800 media representatives planning to attend the four-day birthday bash. Among the 68 descriptive notes in the package is one called "The Sweep of Harvard History." Four others provide synopses of the four presidents preceeding Bok.
Critics point to these info-packs as examples of the University's attempt to sweep negative history under the rug. Information on Harvard's history and presidents, for example, fails to mention the anti-Semitic and racist attitudes of President A. Lawrence Lowell, Class of 1877. Any mention of the 1969 decision by President Nathan M. Pusey '28 to arrest students who had taken over University Hall was omitted.
The Gazette, Harvard's in-house newspaper, published a time line in its special 350th supplement. The big event in 1969, according to The Gazette, was that Harvard opened its community health plan.
Nor were any University photographs of the 1969 protest released to media organizations; officials said they could not release pictures of incidents involving students who may have faced disciplinary action. Harvard's photo policy sent reporters scrambling elsewhere for images of student protest, while most newspapers opted not to use them at all.
"During this sort of occasion Harvard isn't going to exactly air its own dirty laundry," says Alan Brinkley, Dunwalke Associate Professor of American History. "There is a blandness to the media coverage typical of events like this," Brinkley says of the stories that have been written for the 350th.
"The national media is not interested enough in this to look at controversies in-depth," says Brinkley. "As far as I can tell the media is doing its obligatory Harvard piece without expending any real energy so they do what the news office tells them to write," Brinkley explains.
Costa says that much of the coverage about the 350th has been very general but adds that press releases from his office haven't been entirely laudatory of Harvard. He points to a lengthy piece on "The Black Presence at Harvard," written by Caldwell Titcomb '47, which documents how the University shunned Black students until very recently. The piece also discusses Lowell's racism and anti-Semitism.
The Semitic museum has also prepared a look at Lowell's attempts to impose a quota on the number of Jews accepted at Harvard, which will be displayed during the 350th. Citing that exhibit, former Dean of the Faculty Henry Rosovsky says it would be untrue to say that Harvard has attempted to hide its history for the celebration.
Another sore spot for Harvard's public relations team was the requirement that all reporters seeking credentials to cover the event indicate their race on an application form. When one Brazilian newspaper answered "human" to the race question, the news office told the South Americans they would not receive credentials unless they completed the form accurately.
The controversy reached the pages of the Village Voice when Geoffrey Stokes included it in his media criticism column "Press Clips." The News Office told Stokes that the information was needed for security reasons by the FBI to protect President Reagan. But as stokes pointed out, Reagan is no longer coming to the celebration.