Dear Harvard,
Just two weeks ago, President Faust and Dean Khurana pressured Harvard faculty and graduate students to
finally agreed to reconsider Harvard’s decision to institute answer to HUAC, or else face consequences.
an official blacklist that would punish members of
sororities, fraternities, and final clubs.
Of those whose former Communist associations became
known to Harvard, one graduate student lost his teaching
A new committee, this time composed of students, faculty, fellowship after being charged with misconduct by the
and administrators, will have a chance to reevaluate Harvard Corporation, one professor was placed on three
the policy and recommend changes. To do that, the years’ probation for “grave misconduct,” one Harvard
committee and the Harvard community must understand Ph.D. recipient had his candidacy for an administrative
Harvard’s lamentable history when it comes to freedom of and tutoring position pulled, and one Ph.D. recipient
association. After all, as Harvard’s own George Santayana refused to take a teaching position given on the stipulation
wrote in 1905, “Those who cannot remember the past are that he name names to HUAC.
condemned to repeat it.”
In the 1920s and 50s, Harvard boasted many of our nation’s
At least twice before, Harvard has succumbed to the most intelligent and eminent figures among its faculty and
temptation to punish students for their purportedly administration, just as it does today. President Lowell,
undesirable associations. When making such Dean Bundy, the Harvard Corporation, and those who
determinations, there are only two real choices: went along with their decisions understood freedom of
interrogation behind closed doors, and embarrassing association. They simply believed that some associations
public inquisitions. Harvard’s history includes both.
were too unsavory to tolerate—just as some are convinced
that association with single-sex clubs should be placed
In 1920, Harvard President Abbott Lawrence Lowell beyond the pale today.
empaneled the “Secret Court” of four administrators and
a lone professor. Its task: to interrogate students behind Which is more likely: that Harvard has finally found an
closed doors about whether they were homosexual or association so undesirable that a blacklist is appropriate,
associated with those who were. Students were forced to or that abandoning the principle of freedom of association
turn on their friends and “name names” of others known is always a mistake?
to associate with gay men.
Is there any meaningful way to determine a student’s
In the end, eight students were expelled from Harvard “unsavory” associations that’s unlikely to take on
for allegedly engaging in gay sex or associating with those the sinister aspect of Harvard’s clandestine Secret
who did. Alumni Placement Services was prevented from Court, or resemble the all-too-public humiliations
“making any statement that would indicate confidence delivered by Senator McCarthy? If there is, why was
in these men” without first informing inquirers about the implementation of Harvard’s plan being developed
their alleged crimes. Shortly after this ordeal, one of the in secret?
eight committed suicide.
We now recognize that the Harvard of the 1920s and the
The disgraceful truth of Harvard’s actions was only 1950s was tragically wrong. Will Harvard risk making
exposed in 2002, when the Crimson stumbled over the such a mistake again, or will it learn from the lessons of
Secret Court’s records in the Harvard Archives, where the past?
they remain today. As then-Harvard President Lawrence
Summers said at the time, “These reports of events long If Dean Khurana and Harvard are serious about rigorously
ago are extremely disturbing. They are part of a past that reevaluating the policy, they must include faculty and
we have rightly left behind.”
student critics of the policy on the committee. The
committee must also do its work transparently so that
Three decades later, facing pressure from Senator the Harvard community has a chance to comment while
Joseph McCarthy (who called Harvard the “Kremlin the plan is being developed and changes are still possible.
on the Charles”), Harvard began to cooperate with
McCarthyism. The Harvard Corporation interrogated Whatever is decided, the Foundation for Individual
faculty and graduate students accused of Communist Rights in Education (FIRE) assures the Harvard
sympathies and charged them with misconduct when community that as long as students are threatened
they refused to name names in front of the House Un- with punishment for exercising their right to freedom
American Activities Committee (HUAC).
of association, FIRE will continue to advocate for the
return of this fundamental American value to Harvard’s
McGeorge Bundy, the Dean of the Faculty of Arts and campus. The painful lessons of history—both Harvard’s
Sciences—allegedly acting in cooperation with the FBI— and our nation’s—demand no less.

thefire.org/dear-harvard