Heimert says he even believes that the aftermath permanently affected his professional career.

He also was witness to its profound effect on the faculty as a whole and the administrative response to student demands.

He says he immediately saw a distancing of the Faculty in their desire to interact with students because they they were ostracized.

"A House became increasingly difficult to run after the uprising--faculty members did not want to come down for lunch anymore because for two to three months they were demonized," he says.

Still, the damage caused by 1969 led him to rededicate himself to undergraduate teaching. Heimert's efforts have paid off--he was awarded the Levenson Award for undergraduate teaching excellence.

Yet, even for Heimert, who believes the "student revolution" accomplished little, he believes the spirit of 1969 was well-placed.

"There was a certain incandescence in that period, that after the revolution never returned and became the tunnel-vision careerists we have now who ask during freshman registration, 'Which way to the pre-law tutor?" he says.

Changing the World

If the events of April 1969 had an effect on the careers of the students who watched them happen, it seems to have sent many of them into academia. From these positions, many say they seek to pre-empt the communication breakdown that made students think a takeover was necessary.

And for many of this activist generation, there is an important sense that 1969 is still an important lesson--it is not so much history as much as it is a constant and personal guide to their current lives.

At an event to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the bust in 1989, speaker Dale E. Fink '71-'72 summed up as well as could be hoped the confused and powerful set of feelings that 1969 still conjures up in those who were at Harvard then.

"We're here to commemorate those victories and to affirm...those events are still meaningful for us and those are the values we still live by," Fink said. "We did not come here for nostalgia."