Splitting With Harvard

In 1937, as she lay dying from an infection caused by an operation, infection caused by an operation, Kleindienst's mother left him with one goal.

"Hitch your wagon to a star, Dickie, and if possible, someday try to go to Harvard,'" Kleindienst recalls her saying.

When Kleindienst returned to the U.S. after two and a half years with the 15th Air Force in Italy, he jumped at the opportunity to study at the nation's oldest university through the help of the G.I. bill.

Today Kleindienst has fond memories of his days in the ivory tower studying with then-chair of the economics department Harold H. Burbank and presiding over a sparsely numbered conservative debate team.

"All the frustrations of soldiering and war and all the suppressed desires to be involved in politics were relived at Harvard," Kleindienst writes in his biography.

But despite his experiences, coupled with a wife and son who both spent spent their college years in Cambridge, Kleindienst did not attend his class' 1972 reunion and does not plan to attend this year's festivities.

Kleindienst says that events during the Vietnam War "left a bad taste" in his mouth.

Kleindienst says that he was asked by President Nathan M. Pusey '28 to speak at the University's Commencement exercises, in 1972.

Although Kleindienst was opposed to the Vietnam War, the Harvard Radcliffe Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) protested his involvement with the controversy through the Nixon administration.

As a result, Kleindienst says he was "disinvited" from his speaking engagement.

Although he says he is not bitter about its actions, he insists that Harvard should not have made such a biased political decision.

"You can't politicize a great university," he says. "I don't think that it is consistent with the traditions of a great liberal university."

A Political Life

Throughout his political career, Kleindienst says he maintained a commitment to the ideals that were instilled in him by his grandfather.