Harvard Turmoil No Worse Than the Vietnam War Era Says Joe Nye in New Book

Since the surprise October 7 attack by Hamas on Israel, American universities have been embroiled in campus protests as well as questions about what limits—if any—on free speech are appropriate at private institutions, what constitutes harassment (which is protected against at universities by Title VI) and more. Historically, college students tend toward activism, but over the past three months, Harvard and the responses by its newly inaugurated president, Claudine Gay, were particular flashpoints, with highly publicized events including an October 8 letter by 34 student groups blaming Israel for the attack the prior day, frequent pro-Palestinian protests and antisemitic and Islamophobic incidents on campus. After initially weathering a contentious Congressional hearing on antisemitism, President Gay resigned on January 2 following plagiarism charges.

Reflecting on the differences between the protests of today and those of the Vietnam War era, Harvard professor emeritus Joseph S. Nye, Jr., puts the events on the campus into context in the current situation in an adapted excerpt from his new memoir, A Life in the American Century (Polity Books). Nye is an international relations expert and a former Kennedy School dean. He also worked in the State Department, Pentagon and intelligence community during the Carter and Clinton administrations.

Harvard University is passing through rough political seas in the wake of the war in Gaza and the resignation of President Claudine Gay. Younger colleagues sometimes ask me if I have ever seen things so disrupted. My answer is “yes”—the Vietnam War years were worse! For my new memoir, A Life in the American Century, I revisited my diaries from this period. The entries reveal how volatile and hostile the atmosphere was at Harvard at the time.

In the first half of the 1960s, Harvard faculty meetings were lightly attended. They were held in the great faculty room in University Hall where tea was served, a grandfather’s clock chimed and portraits of early notables looked down on the assembled faculty. By 1967, the meetings had become so contentious that they had to be held in large theaters and political differences often followed generational lines. Student protesters blocked some visitors such as Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, and campus opinion on the Vietnam War was deeply divided.

In April 1969, several hundred students occupied University Hall and were removed by city and state police. Harvard President Nathan Pusey, who had called the police, was heavily criticized and took early retirement in 1971. Numerous protests occurred during those years, including a large and destructive riot in Harvard Square, where it was not clear who were students and who were fringe radicals to the area. The faculty was deeply divided on issues like having Reserve Officer Training (ROTC) units on campus. Debates over creation of a new department of African American studies were also acrimonious. Some of the sharpest divisions were between the senior and junior professors.

My office was in the Center for International Affairs (CFIA), which was temporarily housed in the underutilized old Semitic Museum. As director of student programs, I soon had my hands full. False rumors abounded that the Center was organizing the Vietnam War. Our building was occupied a number of times; an attack by a Weathermen fringe group sent a staff member to the hospital; in another attack a bomb was exploded in a second-floor office. To quote a Weathermen pamphlet from November 1969: “The people who run the CFIA are hired killers. They write reports for the government on how to keep a few Americans rich and fat. Professors who help the government are pigs. Isn’t there a pig you’d like to get?”

They boasted that they broke into the building, hung the Viet Cong flag, “kicked the swine down the stairs, and broke all the windows.” On another occasion, as I was briefing a committee of distinguished outsiders about our programs, I heard a commotion in the hallway and protesters broke into the seminar room. They picked up pitchers of water from the table and poured them on the seated guests, who included the elder statesman John McCloy, sometimes known as the chairman of “the Establishment.”

In 1969, when Henry Kissinger went to Washington to become national security advisor for President Nixon, his office was empty, and I was assigned to it. I placed a peace sticker in the window, to no avail. Coming back to my office after a seminar one afternoon, I heard a dull roar as a mob chanted its way toward our building. The Center Director came out of his office and told me to call the campus police. I crawled to my desk as bricks came through the window, despite my peace sticker. The campus police said they were aware of the situation but there was nothing they could do about it. When the mob broke into my office, they pulled down all my bookshelves and threw typewriters against walls and through partitions. So much for the ivory tower!

As a young assistant professor, I shared some of the students’ views on the Vietnam War, if not their methods, and I remember talking to some who were holding a sit-in in our library and finding them quite reasonable. But their concerns had spread beyond Vietnam to systemic critiques of capitalism and imperialism and the role of the university. Many students argued that Harvard was imperialistic because it sent economists to advise poor countries on their economic development. I decided to teach a course on imperialism hoping we could disagree but have serious discourse.

Large rallies were different. I defended the CFIA at mass meetings organized by students in the vast Memorial Hall. The mood of a large crowd is volatile, and with violent rhetoric whipping up the audience, I always felt an undercurrent of fear and anxiety. After Nixon invaded Cambodia, the National Guard was mobilized and in May 1970 killed four students at a protest at Kent State University. Harvard students called a protest meeting with a number of demands, including the closing of the CFIA. I spoke at the mass rally in Memorial Hall, pleading with students not to attack our Center. To my pleasant surprise, they voted down a resolution to attack us. But the next morning, the student paper did not report that vote in its news story, instead publishing an editorial urging closure of the Center and arguing that the only reason not to bomb it was that it was housed in the Semitic Museum. In an amusing sequel, many years later I met the student who wrote that editorial: by then he had become a professor of law and was duly apologetic.

Today, as happened earlier, a president has resigned, but the faculty is not deeply divided and the external challenges we face are different. Instead of outside radicals using violence, today’s external pressures are from billionaires trying to micromanage the university by threatening to withdraw donations, and politicians appealing to their bases by attacking elite universities.

The presidents of Penn, Harvard and MIT were summoned to testify before a House of Representatives committee and were asked about extremist statements on campus by Palestinian students and their supporters in the aftermath of the atrocious Hamas attack on Israel on October 7th. The three presidents had been carefully briefed by lawyers and gave answers consistent with the First Amendment that what constitutes protected free speech depends upon the context. What they failed to understand was that their interrogators were not interested in free speech and correct interpretation of the First Amendment but were engaged in political theatrics. The rookie presidents failed to realize that the situation called for a values statement rather than carefully correct answers. Ironically, one of the chief inquisitors was Republican Representative Elise Stefanik of New York, a Harvard graduate and onetime moderate Republican who had become a strong supporter of former President Donald Trump.

In the aftermath of the hearings, hundreds of faculty members and Harvard’s top governing board expressed support for President Claudine Gay. She would have survived in office had it not been for questions that were raised about plagiarism and her sloppy scholarly citations. Whatever her intentions, it is not tolerable to have a different plagiarism standard for students and the president. Thus, Harvard is searching for a new president.

Harvard’s current problems are real and will take time to work through, but I believe the situation is not as bad as the 1960s. Today Harvard has troubles, but —thus far—no bombs have exploded or staff been sent to hospital. The institution is likely to survive and thrive.

Adapted from A Life in the American Century. Copyright © 2024 by Joseph S. Nye, Jr. Published by Polity Books.