Institute for Activists

Academic controversy is currently not limited to California. At the moment, another but lesser battle of words rages over Harvard's new Institute of Politics, supported by the John F. Kennedy Library Corporation. British Journalist Henry Fairlie ignited the fuss with an article in London's Sunday Telegraph and the Washington Post, charging that the institute is a vehicle for the Kennedy family "to move in on Harvard" in order to nourish brainpower for its future political staffs. One sign of this takeover, claimed Fairlie, is that Harvard's 30-year-old Graduate School of Public Administration, of which the institute is one branch, last fall changed its name to the John Fitzgerald Kennedy School of Government. Harvard officials reacted with unusual emotion to Fairlie's accusations. President Nathan Pusey, although initially concerned about the relationship of the university to the institute, defended it last week in his annual report to the Board of Overseers. He explained that the public-administration school had been renamed "to honor an especially illustrious alumnus and public figure whose career had evoked hope and a lifting of spirit in idealistic young people in all quarters of the globe."

While this did not quite indicate why Harvard has no academic school honoring such equally illustrious alumni and public figures as the two President Roosevelts and the two President Adamses, Dean Don K. Price Jr. of the government school said that "it is unusual to have a Harvard graduate assassinated while serving as President of the United States." The director of the institute, Dr. Richard Neustadt, insisted that it is "wholly nonpartisan and wholly Harvard"--and one university professor sniffed that "it might be easier to get control of the Government than of Harvard."

Living Memorial. Created as a "living memorial" to J.F.K., the institute operates on money provided by the Kennedy Library Corporation--even though the library has not yet achieved its $22 million goal in a fund-raising drive entirely apart from the university's current efforts to raise $160 million. Opened in temporary quarters last fall --the J.F.K. Library and School of Government hope to move to a complex of new buildings along the Charles River in 1971--the institute has just ten full-time "fellows" and a staff of 29 part-time teachers, most of whom have had Government experience. Among them are ex-Atomic Energy Commissioner John G. Palfrey and former legislative assistants to Hubert Humphrey and Senators Thomas Kuchel and Gaylord Nelson. The fellows get up to $15,000 a year, are free to pursue their own scholarly interests but get no academic credit. Twice a month, they gather at Harvard's Signet Society for politically oriented conversation over dinner with selected guests. Last week they grilled four of the nation's most alert China-watchers, including Edwin O. Reischauer, former Ambassador to Japan.

Sensitive to charges of partisanship, the institute has balanced its guest list with an eye to political realities. First came Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, whose appearance touched off a raucous student protest (TIME, Nov. 18). Then came Republican House Minority Leader Gerald Ford, followed by Detroit's Democratic Mayor Jerome Cavanagh. Scheduled this spring are Republican George Romney and Democrat Carl Sanders, former Governor of Georgia.

Evolving Developments. Some of the fellows also turn teacher twice a month, hold noncredit seminars for undergraduates. Kuchel's former aide, Stephen Horn, for example, recently held one on the Republican Party, enlisted G.O.P. Strategists F. Clifton White and Malcolm Moos to help out. The institute's faculty, most of whom hold professor- ships in other Harvard departments as well, also conduct action-oriented studies, such as an 18-month probing of "evolving developments in Europe," headed by Adam Yarmolinsky, a one-time Pentagon and poverty aide who fell out of favor with Lyndon Johnson.

An eleven-member advisory committee, including Jacqueline Kennedy and five other friends of the family, meets biannually to discuss the institute, but has no authority over its staff or the school of government. Both Harvard officials and Kennedy friends insist that the institute's nonpartisan goal is to fill a significant gap in the academic world. In essence, it has been designed as a temporary center of intellectual refreshment for the modern breed of academic activist whose real love is to make and execute federal policy--yet who also cannot live too long without some contact with the world of ideas.

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