THE HARVARD RULE

• Document Type: CREST
• Collection: General CIA Records
• Document Number (FOIA) /ESDN (CREST): CIA-RDP88-01315R000300090025-6
• Release Decision: RIFPUB
• Original Classification: K
• Document Page Count: 1
• Document Creation Date: December 16, 2016
• Document Release Date: October 4, 2004
• Sequence Number: 25
• Publication Date: August 10, 1978
• Content Type: NSPR

Approved For Release 2004/10/13 : CIA-RDP88-01315R000300090025-6
LITTLE ROCK DEMOCRAT
10 August 1978
`'the Harvard Rule
On too many university campuses, the CentraL
Intelligeence Agency is regarded more as a threat to
A!fierican c'~"`iva n erties.'than as a first-line defense
against our enemies. The campus culture declares that
the CIA more often spies on us than on our enemies. The
consequences of this outlook'are costly in. tolerance as
well as securityand are sad to watch.
Harvard University has succumbed to the sickness,
Harvard won't let its faculty do CIA work-except open-.
ly! Harvard says very forthrightly that the no-secrecy
.rule buttresses the teacher-pupil:relatlonship, which- is
undermined by a student's even thinking that a professor
might-be working.for.the CIA!
In spite of'the?rule, Harvard professors are indeed
'working secretly for the CIA.. The CIA admits it. The
agency ignores the Harvard rule as selective (it.applles
to nobody else) and as merely reflecting student preju-,
dice..So Harvard wants Congress to enforce the rule for .
it and make the. CIA cease clandestine. recruitment
there. 5 ...._v
Should Congress do so?' We think not. If Harvard
wants to regiment its faculty's behavior to comportwith?
student prejudice-,, that's Harvard's business.'And'so?is,
the' enforcement and the 'punishment=firing, though,
from a libertarian standpoint, the rule stinks. .
Subordinating an acedemic's private life-to the ser-
vice of campus- prejudice is ugly enough: But the notion,
that all Harvard teachers now labor (as Harvard Presi~
dent Derek Bok says) under a student suspicion of being
CIA agents is a shameful commentary on a.great univerw,
sty's capacity for ignorant intolerance. It smacks of the.
Jewish grandmother test of Aryanism practiced in
Hitler's Germany. P?
Finally, the hallucinatory assumption underlying
the Harvard rule itself--that a CIA recruit is an auto
matic spy on his own people-is as pitiful an obsession as
any center of learning ever publicly convicted itself of.
But it's Harvard's problem, squaring the implica-
tions of its CIA rule with its own notions of personal
freedom and-public image. Its effort, however, to make 1
Congress---and hence the American people--a party to
its repressions ought to get a quick noon the most logical
of grounds-that it's perfectly lawful -for the- CIA to
recruit anybody that wants to work forit: .- ?
If it- makes no sense for Congress to perform
Harvard's censorship for itj-it would make even less
sense for Congress to enjoin the CIA's pursuit of goals
laid down by charter. The CIA IS a clan destine agency,
but that does't mean it's evil for anyone'to work for it.
Countless Americans have done so and for the best of
motives, patriotism.. Why not university professors?.
The CIA's Harvar&recruits (says theCIA) consider
their work neither a breach of professional ethics nor an
act of disloyalty to Harvard, Harvard can, of course, fire
them with the-same freedom they themselves exercise
in choosing to'do theircountry's'securitywork. Biit`tha
Senate Select Committee shouldn't put the Harvard fac..
ulty off limits to clandestine CIA recruitment. The right=.w
ness or wrongness of what the teachers. do is strictly
between them and Harvard. -
We wonder whether, in fact, the Harvard adminis-
tration really. has full student license forwhatit's doing.
We'd hate- to see a poll proving it. But if -it is so, the
university its faculty and its student body are in deeper,
trouble with their own. notions of civil liberties than they.
can everbe with the CIA's occasional lapses in that area
Approvei,d For Release 2004/10/13 : CIA-RDP88-01315R000300090025-6