According to Ellis. The heyday of Harvard influence in Washington was the presidency of John F. Kennedy '40 during the Kennedy era, the fabled Cambridge-Washington shuttle became famous for transporting Harvard's ideas to the halls of Congress and the White House.

"The New England academic community was plugged into Washington in a big, big way in the early and mid-1960s," Ellis says.

The most prominent Harvard professor who moved to the beltway during Kennedy's reign was McGeorge Bundy, who stepped down as dean of the Faculty of arts and Sciences to become national security adviser.

Many of the ties began to be severed, however, as the '60s drew to a close, Ellis says he believes that the widespread opposition in the academic community to American military involvement in Vietnam was the beginning of the end.

Ellis says he believed the election of Richard M. Nixon, followed by republican administrations in 20 of the last 24 years helped "cut Cambridge out of the inner circles of government,"

"Cambridge is a pretty liberal place, and these are pretty conservative administrations," Ellis says.

Still, the connections between Harvard and the administrations following Kennedy's were not completely broken. John H. Dunlop stepped down as dean of the Faculty to become Nixon's secretary of labor.

And while his days as a Harvard professor werelong behind Henry A. Kissinger '50 when he becamesecretary of state, his ties to the schoolremained.

In the Carter administration. Nye served asundersecretary of state, and under Ronald Reagan,Baker Professor of Economics Martin S. Feldstein'61 chaired the Council of Economic Advisers.

But Nye believes that time and the Harvardmystique have exaggerated the Cambridge-WashingtonLinks especially during the Kennedy-Johnson years.

"There's a lot of mythology about that. I thinkyou have to be careful to extract myth fromreality," Nye says. "Just the word 'Harvard ispart of the myth-making."

Still, not everyone is as willing to write offthe connection as a complete myth.

Departing Associate Professor of GovernmentMark A. Peterson, who teachers a course called"The American Presidency," argues that the shuttle"certainly continues to exist," although in aslightly different form.

Peterson himself has shuttled to the Capitolseveral times in the last year to testify onhealth reform before congressional committees.

"The modern government probably has a smallpercentage of people involved" in the shuttling,Peterson says. "That involvement has a muchgreater impact on government and policy optionsthan it has on the electoral process."