Students, too, benefited from the University's liberalism. Womack remembers that under state law, pro- fessors had to sign a loyalty oath not to join the Communist Party. "A friend of mine refused to sign it, and the University finally didn't make him," Womack says.

In fact, President Nathan M. Pusey '28 earned an award from the American Civil Liberties Union for what his faculty termed his "serene and quiet courage" in the face of McCarthyism.

Nevertheless, Harvard bent somewhat under the pressure of public opinion and a faculty that, according to a Crimson poll of the time, opposed Harvard's employment of known communists by a 2-1 margin.

Many suspected the administration of denying tenure to several professors on the basis of their ties to the Communist Party, says Kenan Professor of Government Harvey C. Mansfield Jr. '53.

"The University's policies were pretty clear, though not everything was overt," Mansfield says.

'60s Rebound

Marxist thought rebounded in the late 1960s as flower children and disenchanted youth sought a new ideology. "People turned to Marx because it offered a kind of coherence that rivaled mainstream economics yet was fundamentally different," says Barker Professor of Economics Stephen A. Marglin '59.

During his years of activism in the '60s, Marglin says he demonstrated in Boston and then suffered the consequences: several hours in the city jail. "The police were very gentle, but they incorrectly picked me out as some kind of leader because I was a few years older than the students," Marglin says.

Since the mid-1970s, campus Marxism has been on the decline, and the demise of the Soviet Union dealt an especially harsh blow. Professor of History Mark A. Kishlansky, who comments on Marxist interpretations of English history, says: "The failure of the regimes that were Marxist-inspired has made it a much more difficult sell."

A Revival?

If there's going to be a revival of Marxism at Harvard, it won't be in economics. Instead, Marxist interpretations of history are popping up in progressive and radical movements like feminism and multiculturalism.

"From the point of view of political philosophy, Marx was the first to argue that sex roles are meaningless," Mansfield says.

Purdy argues that Marx's value as a philosopher extends far beyond his economic critiques. "Marx was a great humanist," he says. "The fundamental Marxian idea is that the structure of society has robbed us of some sort of human potential or essence."

It's this dehumanization of individuals that many movements of the '90s seek to combat. Feltman says it is these types of radical social and cultural critiques that fill the pages of Perspective.

But writing is usually as far as '90s Marxism goes. While students and faculty at Harvard are happy to discuss Marxist ideas in the dining hall or in academic journals, they are far less likely to be attending demonstrations or contributing to revolutionary organizations.

The reluctant stance of "parlor-pinks" toward Marxism is "deeply ironic," Purdy says.