Can college leaders today learn from Harvard's past?
How does that 70-year-old history bear on today's targeting by President Trump of law firms, foundations, and, most of all, institutions of higher learning?
Trump has followed to the letter McCarthy's blueprint for bullying. In fact, he had the very same guide as the senator — Roy Cohn, McCarthy's ingenious and imperious protégé who, 30 years later, became Trump's bare-knuckled preceptor. Cohn passed to Trump these McCarthy precepts: When attacked, aim a wrecking ball at your assailant. If one charge against a manufactured enemy is exposed as hollow, lob a higher-octane bombshell. When the news is bad, blame the media.
While Trump is of course an all-powerful president, whereas McCarthy was merely one of 96 senators, the Wisconsin Republican had the wholehearted approval of a full 50 percent of America, which is more than Trump has garnered in comparable polls. And while schools like Harvard were less dependent on federal dollars in the 1950s than they are now, the Cold War had opened a substantial government spigot.
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Back then, Harvard was training a disproportionate number of the foreign service officers McCarthy targeted and, as an added irritation, it named Pusey, a nettlesome McCarthy critic, as its 24th president in 1953.
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At the time, Pusey was president of Lawrence College, an underappreciated school in Appleton, Wis., McCarthy's hometown. The senator and the academic got along fine until Pusey endorsed an anti-McCarthy tract called
'
The McCarthy Record,
'
published the summer before the 1952 election and intended to defeat its subject. McCarthy was seething but kept quiet until the following spring, when Pusey was named Harvard's new head.
Pusey 'appears to hide a combination of bigotry and intolerance behind a cloak of phoney, hypocritical liberalism,' the senator said in a statement. 'I do not think that Pusey is or has been a member of the Communist Party. However, while he professes a sincere dislike for Communism, his hatred and contempt appear to be infinitely greater for those who effectively expose Communists. … Harvard's loss is Wisconsin's gain.'
McCarthy hadn't realized that Pusey, a deeply religious, staunchly Republican scholar, had built his own base in the community during his decade running the college. Several editorial boards that had resolutely backed the senator split company here, including his own Appleton Post-Crescent,
which wrote,
'In stating that 'I do not think Dr. Pusey is or has been a member of the Communist party,' McCarthy used a gutter-type approach.'
Pusey himself responded in the pithy style of an English literature scholar: 'When McCarthy's remarks about me are translated it means only: I didn't vote for him.' His outspokenness against McCarthy won the heartiest accolades from the body that came first with Pusey, the Harvard Corporation, helping seal his appointment as president.
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The battle that began in Appleton migrated swiftly to Cambridge. McCarthy sought vengeance against left-leaning faculty members at Harvard, who he said were fair game for his subcommittee given the university's lucrative contracts with the Department of Defense. What he didn't say, but we know now, is that McCarthy's investigators were digging up anything they could find on Reds at Harvard.
Caught in the crossfire was a physics professor who admitted to having been a Communist, although he wasn't still and he refused to name former comrades despite McCarthy's bullying. 'Each time he refuses,' McCarthy railed against professor Wendell Furry, 'he will be cited for contempt. This will be another way, perhaps, of getting rid of Mr. Pusey's Fifth-Amendment Communists.'
Pusey cabled his stern reply in November 1953: 'I am not aware that there is any person among the three thousand members of the Harvard faculty who is a member of the Communist Party. We deplore the use of the Fifth Amendment for the reasons set forth in the corporation's statement of May 20, 1953, but we do not regard the use of this constitutional safeguard as a confession of guilt. My information is that Dr. Furry has not been connected with the Communist Party in recent years. My information is also that Dr. Furry has never given secret material to unauthorized persons or sought to indoctrinate his students.'
Could the Pusey model offer a path forward for today's college presidents, deluged by the double whammy of budget axes and political onslaughts? Absolutely.
Lesson one: Make clear that you share the supposed goals of the bludgeon-wielding commander-in-chief, be it protecting freedom of speech or promoting government efficiency, but deplore his tactics of reckless accusation, guilt by association, and fear-mongering.
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Lesson two: Ensure your trustees are behind you, then staunchly defend scapegoated faculty and students.
Last lesson: Take heart from the fact that Joe McCarthy fell even faster than he rose, once America saw through him and reclaimed its better self.
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