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As freshmen stepped onto Harvard’s campus in the fall of 1969, they were surrounded by political tension: the preceding year had witnessed the assassinations of Martin Luther King Jr. and Robert F. Kennedy ’48. And after President Lyndon B. Johnson chose not to seek reelection, Richard Nixon assumed his position, inheriting responsibility for a war that seemed senseless to many.
In opposition to the Vietnam War, student protests and demonstrations erupted across the country. In the spring of 1969, protestors occupied University Hall, condemning the war and demanding Harvard shut down the Reserve Officers Training Corps program. Hundreds were arrested following the demonstration.
“We showed up, and it was just sort of like this political revolution that was happening,” recalled Thomas J. Schneider ’73.
In interviews with The Crimson, members of the Class of 1973 reflected on the tumultuous political atmosphere of the era and its impact on the trajectory of their lives half a century later.
Spring Riots in the Square
For many alumni who spoke to The Crimson about their recollections, the riot that occurred in Harvard Square on April 15, 1970 stood out as a crystallization of the political strife of the era. That day, thousands of demonstrators marched from Boston Common to Harvard Square, where some protesters began setting fires and throwing bricks and rocks into nearby windows.
In an email, Robert W. Shoemaker III ’73 remembered watching the riot from his “front row seat” in Lionel Hall, describing the scene as a “bad movie.”
“It was the only time in my life that I ever experienced tear gas, which seeped in through the windows even when we closed them,” Shoemaker wrote.
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Evan W. Thomas III ’73, a former Crimson editor who later authored a biography of Nixon, said he was standing on Massachusetts Avenue across from Widener Library when he was startled by a protester throwing a rock, which shattered a pane of glass in a bank nearby.
His first instinct was to pull out a notebook and start reporting.
“My memory is running around in the streets, going to The Crimson to sort of figure out, how do you help yourself with tear gas? We would put damp clothes over our mouths,” Thomas said. “We were just going around watching it, watching the cops chase the kids, being chased ourselves.”
“It was kind of weirdly fun and dramatic, and also awful at the same time,” he said. “Thrilling, and kind of scary all at once.”
Thomas A. Mesereau Jr. ’73 recalled one particular protest that resembled a scene from a science-fiction movie.
“I threw water on my face, got dressed, went outside. And I felt like I landed on another planet,” he said. “On one side were all these students — protesters. In front of them were a number of trash cans on fire. And on the other side, facing them, were police officers from different cities around Boston, so they all had slightly different uniforms on.”
“All of a sudden, all hell broke loose. Tear gas started flying in Harvard Square and over the wall to Harvard Yard,” Mesereau continued. “Students were coming out well-dressed and they thought they'd landed on the moon.”
On April 30, 1970, Nixon shocked the world with his announcement that the U.S. would invade Cambodia. In response, more than four million students staged walkouts across the nation, with one such protest taking place at Kent State University. This demonstration spiraled into chaos when the National Guard opened fire, killing four students and injuring 11, sparking outrage and further fueling the nationwide movement.
In the aftermath of Kent State, Harvard students joined the nationwide student strike, while faculty stood in solidarity by administering optional final exams and offering classes on a pass-fail basis. The semester was effectively over.
Nixon’s Reelection
Nixon’s landslide reelection in 1972 over then-Senator George McGovern came as a bitter defeat on campus, some alumni said.
“We, of course, all despised Nixon,” Ronald A. Dieckmann ’73 said. “He was the perpetrator of the war in our eyes, at that time.”
Thomas, who covered Nixon’s victory as a Crimson reporter, said some students were almost “snobbish” in their distaste for the incumbent president.
“People were kind of reflexively critical of Nixon as a bad guy,” Thomas said.
Still, he noted, Nixon also used Harvard as a political punching bag during his campaign, playing into the trope of the “Kremlin on the Charles.” He recounted an anecdote from his book, “Being Nixon: A Man Divided” where Nixon learned then-Harvard president Derek C. Bok was in the White House and demanded he be removed from the premises.
At this point, though early reports about the Watergate break-in were becoming publicized, it had not yet evolved into a full-blown scandal that implicated Nixon personally. It would not be until the summer 1973 Senate hearings into the break-in — following graduation — that the scandal would balloon into the defining, career-ending event of Nixon’s presidency.
Thomas said he felt students were subject to a degree of political exhaustion and were “barely aware” of the early reports of the Watergate break-in.
“The early days of Watergate, the country, even the college kids weren’t paying attention,” he said. “We, Harvard students, were already mostly against Nixon.”
Schneider said Nixon’s victory contributed to some students’ partial withdrawal from politics.
“It deflated the balloon,” Schneider said. “People at that point in time, you could stay politically active and things of that sort, but you really had to be focusing on, what am I going to do with my own life?”
The Impact of the Draft
Many alumni said the possibility of being drafted weighed over male students throughout their time at Harvard and influenced their activism.
“We were actually now designated as potential future soldiers in a war that none of us believed in,” Dieckmann said. “Every one of us remembers what our draft number was today.”
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In January 1973 — just months before graduation — Nixon passed an executive order ending the draft that would have otherwise expired in summer.
Thomas said the political fervor that had peaked in 1970 had, to an extent, worn away by then.
“That took the pressure off,” he said. “It was the draft that really, really fomented students’ dissent and upset and anger. It was the fear of being sent off to Vietnam to get killed that had a lot of Harvard students riled up.”
Marion Dry ’73 said the ending of the draft was a “great relief.”
“So many guys were about to graduate and there was this sense that there was a future,” she said.
Inspiration Out of Turmoil
For Roger B. Myerson ’73, a 2007 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences laureate, the emerging fear of nuclear war in the 1950s first sparked his interest in economics. His tumultuous college years solidified the decision to contribute to the frameworks of game theory.
“We were studying, like every generation, but we felt terribly conflicted about what our country was doing. And in some ways, I’m an example of somebody who has devoted his life to trying to understand social, political theory better in order to maybe avoid such mistakes in the future,” Myerson said, in reference to the Vietnam war.
Dry said the ethic of social activism that defined their college experience influenced her and some classmates to found ClassACT HR73, an organization of hundreds of alumni from the Class of 1973 that works to promote social change.
“All of the turmoil that we experienced, not just the Vietnam War, marked our psyches,” she said. “And as a result, when we got to a certain age, we decided we were going to do something that would take us back to working together in a way that was not dissimilar to the sense of, ‘we’re in this together,’ back when we were in college.”
Dieckmann said his college experience influenced his decision to found a nonprofit working to alleviate health care inequities in low-income countries including Vietnam.
“Vietnam didn’t have a choice in this. We invaded them,” he said. “And it was so unfair to me that I feel in some ways like I’ve almost spent my entire life trying to right that wrong.”
Correction: June 3, 2023
A previous version of this article incorrectly stated that the riot in Harvard Square took place on March 15, 1970. In fact, the riot took place on April 15.
—Staff writer Elias J. Schisgall can be reached at elias.schisgall@thecrimson.com. Follow him on Twitter @eschisgall.
—Staff writer Jennifer Y. Song can be reached at jennifer.song@thecrimson.com.
