A Delicate balance

The Memorial Church group formed after the bust as moderate students tried to find a compromise between radicals and the administration. Kenneth M. Glazier spoke up at the first chaotic meeting and suddenly became a leader of the moderate group.

While Glazier became involved in the Phillips Brooks House Association immediately after graduation, traveling to Africa, he now works as a lawyer in California. He says trying to find a middle ground in 1969 left him with a distrust of any radicals.

"The more sure people are of their positions, the more suspicious I become," he says.

Much of his work as a lawyer now centers on mediation.

"It was a pretty sobering experience to see how furiously uprighteous they were," he says of student radicals. "It had a significance of course on me; something that powerful doesn't pass."

Having served as president of a student-Faculty committee which attempted to head off anti-war controversy before the takeover, Glazier said he was permanently disillusioned by the Harvard Corporation's refusal to listen to the Faculty suggestions on ROTC.

"The Faculty was told on this really burning issue to go fly a kite and that the captains of industry were going to come in and decide," he says. "There was a sense of arrogance and we know what is good for the students."

Men in the middle

Having to work as a student, teacher and House official, PeterWood says he tried to stay out of the debate. But now he says that the students' perspectives were ignored by the powers-that-were in the late '60s.

'"I think probably I would have been on the lenient side," Wood says. "I was conscious of the point that the perspective of the students was not being adequately presented at the national level."

Now a full-time history professor at Duke University, Wood says the events of 1969 helped him gain an appreciation for what passion can do for education.

"Because of that experience in 1969, I know that there can be a moment of tremendous energy and learning when they debate issues and pay attention," he says.

He says the lack of real student activism or concern with current events at modern universities is an unhealthy sign--the stimulating debate that ran off its tracks in 1969 is, he says, an essential part of the university experience.

"We seem to oscillate as a society between times of apathy and self-centered ignorance, and times of hyper energized activism, sometimes bordering on thoughtless" Wood says. "Even with Kosovo in the wings, we're in the more apathetic mode. I wish students were more motivated, concerned."

Faculty Under Fire

For Alan E. Heimert, 1969 became a crucial turning point not because of the causes it represented, but rather, because of the administrative load it created. Heimert, both stepping into the relatively new shoes of tenured professor and Eliot master, was having his time pulled out from under his feet.

"It burned up so much of my time and energy that I didn't write books. This led my colleagues and the professional administration to wonder if my professional credentials were dubious," Heimert says.