To the Editors:
I was greatly interested in Sigmund Diamond’s review of Education and Politics at Harvard (NYR, April 28) and was tempted to write then as my experiences were very similar to his. Sympathetic though I was to Diamond’s account, I did not feel he had been fair to the book in hand. Not only did the account concern itself with only one section of one chapter of the book, it was not even entirely fair to that section, written by Seymour Martin Lipset. It was Lipset’s chapter, after all, that first opened the discussion and no reader of that chapter could believe that Harvard had acted well in the McCarthy period. When I read the, to me, thoroughly shocking letter of McGeorge Bundy in the May 26 issue, however, I knew that I had to reply. I had believed on the basis of events that I will detail below that Bundy had repudiated, at least in his own mind, actions of the Harvard administration during 1954 and 1955. By his letter I see that this is not so and that Harvard’s capitulation to McCarthyism is still being defended as a form of resistance to McCarthyism. An account of my experiences will, I believe, support Diamond’s and not Bundy’s interpretation of those years.
I was a member of the Communist Party as a Harvard undergraduate from 1947 to 1949. During that period I was mainly involved in the John Reed Club, a recognized student organization concerned with the study of Marxism. In that connection I might recount an incident that indicates that a difference between a public policy and a private policy at Harvard such as Diamond has suggested may already have begun in 1949. According to Lipset:
In 1949, the John Reed Club sponsored a talk by a well-known Communist, Ger-hart Eisler, who was on his way to a job in East Germany after having been convicted for contempt of Congress. When the University was attacked for allowing students to be corrupted, William Bender, then Dean of Harvard College, defended the students’ right to hear, stating: “If Harvard students can be corrupted by an Eisler, Harvard College had better shut down as an educational institution…. [p. 182]
I was, I believe, chairman of the John Reed Club at the time and was informed shortly after we announced that Eisler would speak that the university was considering forbidding the meeting and that the chairman and executive committee of the Club were asked to meet with an administrative officer. The administrator told us in the strongest terms that the invitation was extremely embarrassing for Harvard and asked us for the good of the school to withdraw the invitation. When we stood fast he told us that quite probably none of us would ever get jobs if we persisted in our course of action. The Harvard administration was attempting to do privately and indirectly what it would not do publicly and brazenly, namely suppress freedom of speech, which was precisely the aim of McCarthy.
In the summer of 1954 when I was a graduate student nearing completion of a PhD in Sociology and Far Eastern Languages, married and with a child born only weeks before, I was summoned to the office of McGeorge Bundy, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. Bundy told me that an “officer of the university” had informed him of my political past and that I had an obligation of “complete candor,” as he put it, to confess my activities and to name all of my former associates to the FBI or to any other duly authorized body. I told him that my membership was entirely during my period as a Harvard undergraduate, that my associates were almost entirely other students and that my activities consisted wholly in thought and speech. I indicated, as did Diamond, that I had no knowledge of any illegal activities whatever. He informed me that not only was “complete candor” necessary but that my fellowship would be cancelled and my academic future would be clouded indeed if I failed to cooperate.
Anyone who can imagine the atmosphere in America in the summer of 1954 will understand how devastated I was. I felt utterly violated by this demand, and utterly unconvinced that in an atmosphere of extreme political persecution there was any moral obligation of “candor” such as Bundy spoke of. What took over was sheer survival instinct. How far could I compromise with evil without losing my own soul? It was in that moment that I came to the position that Bundy now describes as “morally superior,” that is (in respect to Diamond) “his choice of candor about himself along with refusal to name other names to the FBI.” At the time Bundy did not suggest that my position was “morally superior,” but only repeated that if I did not cooperate fully I would lose my fellowship. He also told me that he was appointing two professors that he knew I worked with to persuade me to adopt his views.
It is hardly necessary to point out that none of the arguments Bundy uses to justify his actions in the Diamond case apply to mine. In the incident described above there was no appointment, teaching or administrative, involved. I was not even a teaching fellow. I was a mere graduate student whose fellowship was being put in jeopardy to obtain compliance with the political pressures of the day.
One week after meeting with Bundy I was picked up on the street by two FBI agents and taken to the Boston office for interrogation. I suppose that technically I went voluntarily but it did not feel very voluntary. The issue soon came to naming other people. About my own activities their records were more accurate than my memories. Most of the meeting and one subsequent meeting were devoted to more or less intense psychological pressure to get me to name other people. In the course of this they tempted me by naming individuals and suggesting things they knew about them as though it would not really do much harm for me to say a bit more. I insisted resolutely on my moral position but I was impressed that they came up with names and events I had long forgotten. Indeed I wondered whether the real purpose of all this was not information, which they seemed to have in superabundance, but some further form of cooperation.
Of the two professors appointed by Bundy one said simply, “do as your conscience dictates.” The other urged upon me the moral obligation of “complete candor.” My immediate worry was my fellowship. As it turned out it was not a university fellowship but a fellowship from the Harvard-Yenching Institute, a separate corporation. Immediately upon his return from Paris in September I went to see Serge Elisséeff, Director of the Harvard-Yenching Institute, a distinguished Japanologist and a Russian who had left at the time of the revolution. As I told Elisséeff of my interview with Bundy he became extremely agitated. He said, his voice almost a whisper, “This is just like Russia. As long as I am here your fellowship is safe.”
My fellowship began as usual in the fall, but naturally I was extremely apprehensive about the future. I hoped to receive my degree in June of 1955 and was concerned about what kind of job I could get. My decision to try to finish quickly was confirmed when the professor who had urged candor told me I probably would not receive a Harvard-Yenching fellowship the following year. My job anxiety increased when an old professor and advisor who knew of my political past because I had told him of it informed me that he would be glad to write job recommendations for me but that he would have to include information about my past political affiliations. Naturally I did not ask him for letters.
Early in the spring I was quite surprised when Talcott Parsons, Professor of Sociology and my teacher, who had not been involved in any of the earlier discussions and did not even know what had been going on, told me that the Social Relations Department was considering appointing me to a instructorship for the following year, a one-year term appointment normally renewable for several years. I indicated that there might be serious problems with Bundy. There were indeed. Bundy called me in and told me that my appointment was being considered but that it was the policy of the Harvard Corporation that if during the year of my appointment I were called by any duly authorized body (the McCarthy Committee, the Jenner Committee, the House Unamerican Activities Committee and a Massachusetts legislative committee on Unamerican Activities were all active at the time) and refused to answer any question, including questions about the names of my former associates, the Corporation would not feel bound to renew my appointment as lecturer even though my teaching activities were satisfactory. I told him I could not accept the appointment on those terms. I believed that as long as I remained anonymous there was at least the hope of a job. All I needed was to be publicly exposed, perhaps jailed for contempt, and then let go by Harvard (not fired for there is no obligation to renew a one-year contract). In this interview Bundy did not tell me that my position was “morally superior.” Indeed he reiterated that he strongly believed I should divulge the names of others. After probing my reasons for holding my position he did say, however, that he thought I would make an effective witness, perhaps more attractive than some of those who were “fully cooperative.” Since all I had ever received from him was unrelenting pressure for “candor” I did not feel reassured by the compliment.
Parsons and others who supported me hoped to get the Corporation to change its mind. I was even told that President Pusey hoped the Corporation would change its mind. So the matter was not closed and Bundy made a further request of me, one that I found strange but with which I complied. This was a request to visit an official at the Harvard Health Service.
My interview with the official of the Health Service was the strangest event in this strange story. Even in the extraordinary atmosphere of that period when many strange things seemed ordinary that interview was bizarre. He began after a few pleasantries with a story about someone who worked for the State Department who decorated his apartment with pictures of naked women to hide the fact that he was a homosexual. I listened in amazement wondering what this had to do with me. He became less indirect and began asking whether I had ever engaged in sexual acts for which I could be blackmailed. I was trying desperately to understand what was happening when I remembered that six or seven years earlier when I had been an undergraduate I had consulted a doctor in the psychological clinic of the Health Service about feelings and anxieties not uncommon to college undergraduates. Even when I heard myself denying, quite truthfully, that I had ever engaged in such acts, I felt deeply humiliated by being asked the question and betrayed by the use of information that had been obtained in a situation of medical confidentiality. I cannot help but wonder what would have happened if I had been a practicing homosexual. Did Harvard’s willingness to exert political pressure extend to sexual persecution as well?
