Remembering Krister Stendahl
Afterthoughts and Forethoughts
when the revolution came to Harvard last spring, the Divinity School found itself deeply involved in the issues and the action. To most of us, that was not surprising. Not only in the United States but even more in Europe and Latin America the seminaries and the divinity schools have played a prominent role in calling for radical change. I come to think of the words of Dean Sperry, my predecessor as Dean of the Divinity School and the Preacher to the University: "Were it not for an unbroken succession of rebellious sons we would still be gnawing bones in the caves of Mousterian man." In more quiet times such statements may have been listened to as beautiful rhetoric from the pulpit. Now the rhetoric has caught up with us.
Even so, to many our involvement seemed shocking—and to some it was a matter of pride. Few could live through the last months of the academic year 1968-69 and come back this fall unchanged. Not only the emotions expressed and the emotions held back, but the issues laid bare are too important for any hope—or fear—that one could put brackets around those experiences and return to business as usual. So the time has come to reflect on what happened and on where we should go from here.
During the week of 6 April Students for a Democratic Society stated six demands centering on a complete abolishment of the Reserve Officers Training Corps at Harvard—as over against the vote of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences to strip the ROTC program of academic credit and the attempts of the Corporation to implement this decision in as cautious a way as possible—and on stopping University expansion in Cambridge and Boston. SDS discussed plans to back these demands by occupying a University building, but no majority vote emerged on the time and place for an occupation. They called a meeting on the steps of Memorial Church for noon on Wednesday, 9 April. At this meeting a minority voted for the immediate occupation of University Hall and what seems to have been a small group, including some non-Harvard students, proceeded to move into the building and remove the deans and other University officers, and files were rifled. Stephan Hornberger, president of the Divinity School Student Association, joined at an early stage and urged others to join with him. As the afternoon progressed the original occupiers were joined by a larger number of students. At 4:15 pm, Dean Ford of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences asked the occupiers to leave and declared those remaining liable to prosecution for criminal trespass. Few students seem to have left and during the afternoon and evening there was a good deal of coming and going.
After consultation with various groups of administrators the President made the decision to have University Hall cleared by police in the early morning of 10 April, and those present inside University Hall were arrested. Although the University later asked that the charges be dropped, the City of Cambridge opposed such action and about 170 people were found guilty and fined for criminal trespass. Two of these were Divinity students.
The massive police action shocked Harvard into a series of events commonly referred to as the Strike. Already on Wednesday afternoon, shortly after the occupation of the Hall but prior to the police action, a group of student leaders who were critical of the occupation had called a meeting on Thursday morning to lend mediating support to the University. That meeting was held in Memorial Church, but it now took on a very different character. Memorial Church was jammed and a large number of students participated in the meeting through loudspeakers outside. A three-day strike was called in support of demands for no further police action on campus, no criminal charges against protestors, no punishments stronger than probation for protestors, no scholarship cuts and the restoration of scholarships to those previously punished, a binding University-wide referendum on ROTC, the restructuring of the Corporation, and the resignation of the President unless these demands were met. Similar meetings were held in the various graduate schools; in the Schools of Education, Design, and Divinity the intensity of participation and concern was especially strong. And there were the well-known meetings in the Harvard Stadium voting on strike and various resolutions. The one on Monday, 14 April, gathered 10,000.
The Divinity School Faculty met on Thursday evening, 10 April, and decided that the School should suspend all classes and regular activities until noon on Tuesday, 15 April, "in order to permit students, faculty, and staff time to give full attention to the issues raised by the recent events." To many, including some members of the faculty, this action seems to have meant that the Divinity School "joined the strike." For me and for the majority of the faculty it was rather an attempt to recognize the seriousness both of the situation and of the issues underlying the demands. It was our conviction that, not least in a divinity school, the moral and communal concerns expressed called for full-time attention by all, and not for a strike by some. When the period of suspended activities came to its end on Tuesday, 15 April, classes resumed and continuing community meetings were scheduled accordingly, although many carried on their strike for some time.
Out of the open meetings held during the suspension of classes emerged a new instrumentality for debate and voting and resolutions. The HDS Community, an assembly of students, faculty, and staff, defined itself as "a community seeking trust, freedom, rationality, and moral responsibility." The Community elected an Executive Committee, established quorum rules, and made provision for alumni representation on the Executive Committee.
As in other parts of the University, the first items on the agenda of the Community meetings were resolutions on ROTC and University expansion. To these was added the item of restructuring the University. It is worth noting that this last issue was of little interest for SDS—even contrary to its strategy. To SDS, concern for the structures of the University was too much an expression of basic trust in a system they were eager to crush. It has often been forgotten that one of the sharpest lines between "the moderates" and the SDS is exactly the line between those who hope for new structures and those who have little more than contempt for the University.
It is true to say that to some—in enthusiasm or horror—it appeared as though the Community now had asserted itself as the de facto if not de jure government of the School. Needless to say, that is not so, and the Faculty had at no point abrogated its constitutional responsibilities. But the Community structure has allowed us to experiment with the dynamics of community sentiments and decisions. Our experiment is of interest also since it recognizes staff—library personnel, secretaries, administrative assistants, and so on—as part of the HDS Community. In a school like ours this becomes rather natural, since we have been fortunate in having a staff interested and involved in the life of the School well beyond the call of duty.
It is too early to say whether our experiment has staying power beyond situations of acute crisis. I, for one, would like to think that the Community structure can serve as a significant instrument for a constructive involvement by all concerned in the life of the School. We do not expect our students to be just recipients and consumers of our educational offerings. We do not want them to defer their influence on planning and decision-making until they have earned their degrees. But if the Community becomes the vehicle for a small and unrepresentative number of people, then the term Community becomes a pretentious travesty, and we will have to structure our experimentation differently.
Personally I find the most positive outcome of the crisis last spring to be the awareness of all—the Corporation, the Board of Overseers with its committee on restructuring under Judge Friendly, the Faculties, the Committee of Fifteen, etc.—that the time has come for a serious overhaul of structures and decision-making process within the University. Steps in that direction cannot be taken without a fresh look at the aims and methods of education. Thus it is my hope that the year 1969-70 will be a year in which many are willing to devote much time to such efforts. In our School these efforts must be pursued along at least three lines.
First, we will participate in the various University-wide deliberations as to the structure of Harvard. Last spring our faculty noted that a committee of the HDS Community had made a good beginning in this area. The Friendly Committee of the Board of Overseers and the Committee of Fifteen of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences together with similar committees of the various graduate schools seem to be moving toward the establishment of a University senate with faculty and student representation and with a mandate in the areas of overall University policy, priorities, and obligations to society at large and the surrounding community in particular. There is also a pressing need for more of a student voice in the Board of Overseers. It seems to me that at present the formal channel of communication between the various Schools, the University administration, and the governing boards is far too narrow (the Schools relate to the President via the Deans, the Deans to the Corporation and the Board of Overseers via the President). In my judgment, a senate on the one hand and an inclusion of present students in the electorate for the Board of Overseers would be a healthy improvement. I would favor some time-limited experimentation in these areas rather than waiting for the great decisions that are expected to give us the structure for the next hundred years of Harvard history.
Second, an overhaul of the committee structure in the Divinity School itself, which was begun prior to the upheaval last spring, should continue.
The participation of students in planning and decision-making had a relatively early beginning at the Divinity School. In the spring of 1967 the Faculty decided to have two students selected by the Student Association as full voting members of the highly influential committee in charge of our Master of Theological Studies and Bachelor of Divinity programs, and in the spring of 1968 major revisions in the BD program emerged out of a series of meetings with students and faculty.
In January 1969 the Committee on Educational Policy (then consisting only of faculty) took the initiative in opening discussions with the Student Association about student participation on various committees, especially on the CEP itself. Three students were elected by the student body to serve on that committee; thus the CEP now consists of three faculty and three students, plus the Dean as chairman and the President of the Student Association as a non-voting member.
In a similar fashion a new committee was formed for Afro-American religious studies with an equal number of faculty and students, and with substantial black representation. This new committee will coordinate its efforts with similar committees in other parts of the University and in the various BTI schools—especially with the expanding Afro-American program in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. We are pleased to note that one of the first new appointments in that program went to an alumnus of ours, Dr. Ephraim Isaac, BD '63.
The election of new officers of the Student Association in March 1969 was marked by lively discussion and proposals about restructuring the School, and the new president, Stephan Hornberger, was elected on a platform advocating radical overhaul of the administrative structure of the School. At the time of the great upheavals in April the already restructured CEP was working on proposals for possible restructuring of the School. At that time, however, such careful planning was overshadowed by the events.
Our experience of student participation on committees has been a good one and augurs well for the future. But the emphasis on student participation in the decision-making should not make us forget the great importance of student participation at the earliest stages of planning, since that is the point where we need a rich new input of ideas and analyses. In assessing our experience from last spring we also need to sort out what is viable for sustained work over the years rather than ad hoc structures that count on the excitement of crises. For example, I would like to see a more active role for the Teaching Fellows (who are also graduate students) in the deliberations of the faculty, perhaps along the pattern established in the Law School, where Teaching Fellows are members of the faculty with voice but no vote.
Last spring—while the faculty meetings of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences were broadcast live over WHRB—our faculty voted temporary rules for selective student attendance at faculty meetings in general, with the proviso that the faculty meet in executive sessions (without students) when it so desires. The faculty did meet in executive session when acting on degrees and on discipline. This year we shall assess our experience in this matter. Personally I find that student presence in faculty is not only acceptable but a positive factor. Student members of the various committees should have the opportunity to be present and speak to proposals coming to the faculty from their committees. The need for closed sessions is equally clear.
The third line along which we must move is in the area of development planning for the School. Our most recent plans, formulated in a pamphlet called "A Contribution of Consequence" (1966), were based on the work of faculty committees in the early 1960's. It is obvious that those ideas about theological education at Harvard need to be scrutinized in the light of the approaching 1970's. For this purpose I hope that we can establish a Committee on Development Planning, possibly with participation not only from students and faculty but also from members of the Visiting Committee and the Alumni Council.
The need of such a committee is quite clear to anyone who has listened to the range of suggestions and considerations as we proceed with the construction of a new hall in order to meet the needs of our School. This issue of the Bulletin includes two reactions to this project. It must seem strange to many that the generous and gracious gift from Mrs. John D. Rockefeller, Jr., and David Rockefeller could receive anything else than unqualified and grateful enthusiasm. Yet I like to think that—apart from some rhetoric that is deeply distasteful to me—major new facilities should always force us to make clear where we are going and why and how.
The new hall has been a high priority item for us for many years. We now have about four times as large a faculty and student body as we had in 1953-54, the year prior to the revitalization of the School. We are ill equipped for our growing responsibility as a center for continuing education, not to speak about classroom and office space. By moving the dormitory part of Andover Hall over to the new hall and supplying 39 dormitory rooms in all we will be able to relieve some of the pressure on the Cambridge housing market, as the City of Cambridge desires.
Thus I welcome this gift from the Rockefeller family—the outstanding source of support for theological education in the 1950's and 60's and the decisive source of support to our Divinity School in its 1954 revitalization—as a great and lasting contribution to our enterprise. It is hard for me to see ourselves as over-building or as shortsighted when we look forward to the new hall. It is my hope that the constructive ideas engendered by those who oppose this hall can become viable projects for our future planning. But to turn a healthy both-and into a strangling either-or is neither constructive nor farsighted enough for us.
These three broad issues—University restructuring, Divinity School restructuring, and educational planning for the future—are high on the agenda. I am afraid that they will tax the time and patience of both faculty and students, absorbing time usually spent on research and study. Such a state of affairs is not easily accepted by those of us who believe—as I do—that research comes first in the duties of a great university, and that teaching without rejuvenation through research has no place in higher education. Even so, we should perhaps quote Thomas Paine: "If there must be trouble, let it be in my day, that my child may have peace"—and a better education. There is trouble, and it cannot be blamed only on "trouble-makers." It goes deeper than that, and whether we like it or not, we are called on to make the Divinity School a better place for men and women devoted to the moral and spiritual welfare of the world in which we live.
It is a fact that during these last years seminaries and divinity schools have attracted a substantial number of well qualified students of a highly radical kind. For many of them it looks as though religion, theology, even the church in its prophetic form, might be their last hope this side of despair and anarchy. Their frame of thinking often sounds secular and one wonders why they did not rather seek a program in sociology or economics or politics—but it is clear that they are metaphysically hungry. It is the ultimate questions of meaning and sense that agitate them. They find themselves in a world that cannot be helped by tinkering. They experience a world that needs the radical treatment Christianity calls conversion and salvation, and the radical judgment that religious men and women have found in the will and plan of God. Many of the small hopes for improvement that usually sustain us are too uncertain or too selfish for them. They understand the Book of Revelation with its apocalyptic horrors and ultimate salvation better than most of us do. That is how I feel the mood.
This growing number of students constitutes a genuine challenge to theological education today. It would, of course, be easy to declare that a divinity school is for the professional training of those already stabilized in their Christian faith and ministerial calling. But I know of many reasons why such a policy cannot and should not be ours. For us who live with these students it becomes clear that their moral and intellectual energies are great potential powers for the renewal of church and society. The greatest glories in theology and Christianity have always come at the point where man finds himself in fear and frustration, at the end of his rope. So these students have come to the right place.
We have an equally strong responsibility to those who have come to the School with a more definite commitment to a more traditional concept of ministry and scholarship, and who seek a lively academic education for those demanding tasks. It must be recognized and confessed that the upheavals of last spring caused us to give too little attention to the needs and concerns of a large number of students for whom the activities, debates, and resolutions of the Community seemed alien, wrong, or irrelevant. We must be aware of the truly ecumenical nature of our enterprise.
Our Divinity School has always wanted to be nondenominational. In its life and teaching it tried to practice ecumenism even before there was a word for it. But today the real divisions and tensions are not those between denominations; the lines are drawn right through the denominations between those who trust orderly change and those who counsel more drastic and even revolutionary measures. One need only follow the press coverage of the World Council of Churches or the national assemblies of the various churches this summer to know that to be a fact. The ecumenical mandate of our School thus calls for our efforts to encompass this new "ecumenical" spectrum, and at both the angry red end of the spectrum and the serene violet. We are well supported in that effort by the actual composition of both faculty and student body.
It is in that spirit that I understand the Guidelines in Matters of Discipline voted by the Faculty on 12 June expressing the rights and responsibilities of our common life. It is not acceptable, whether for political reasons or otherwise, to "engage directly in violence against any member or guest of the University community, theft or willful destruction of University property or of the property of members of the University, rifling of files, forcible interference with the freedom of movement of any member or guest of the University, or personal harassment or defamation." It is also unacceptable, again in the words of the Guidelines, to "lend support to the aforementioned actions . . . deliberately interfere with academic freedom and freedom of speech (including not only disruption of a class but also interference with the freedom of any speaker invited by any section of the University community to express his views) . . . [or] obstruct the normal process and activities essential to the functions of the University community."
These Guidelines were written under the following premise: "All individuals or groups within the University community have the right to express, advocate, and publicize their opinions. They also have the right to press by appropriate means for action on any matter on which they believe that the University can and should act, and they have the right to be given a full and fair hearing and prompt response. To be appropriate the means must respect both the need to preserve the essential commitment of the University and the right of individual or collective expression of opinion and dissent."
When on that same day the Faculty took disciplinary action on the cases of two students it was, as I see it, guided by this intention of finding a reasonable balance between the precious right of dissent and the equally precious need of the School to fulfill its obligations to all who seek their education and their academic home here.
Some will remember that the academic year 1968-69 began with the symbolic sanctuary that some of our students offered in the chapel of Andover Hall. In retrospect the sanctuary serves as a vignette of a year where moral issues were not only discussed in the classroom but became the very setting in which we teach and live. At that time we made a commitment to arrange for a Colloquium on Moral Responsibility in the University. As our planning progressed, events took over and toward the end of the year we changed our plans to a continuous program with occasional meetings and work sessions. In that line we spent an unusually stimulating time with Ivan Illich of the Centro Intercultural de Documentacion in Cuernavaca. We hope to have similar occasions, for behind much of the rhetoric lies a deep feeling that ultimately our troubles lie not in structure and decision-making but in the basic understanding of education.
These afterthoughts and forethoughts leave me with the conviction that this coming year will be important since it will test our ability to sustain the vision of what is truly important during the hard processes of implementation. To sustain that vision is the genius and the calling of religious men and women, whether they minister to individuals or attempt the acid role of prophets. In that calling we often come in for criticism—some of it valid indeed. I hope for a year when this vision becomes sharpened, not blunted, in the process of implementation and in the climate of compassion—with a little humility. For the work is God's and not ours, and the criticism of friends, and sometimes enemies, is one of the best ways to be reminded of that.
