Your President, Gus Thorndike, has been exceedingly generous in the invitation he has extended me this evening. He has told me that I can speak on any subject – on any subject at all. He has only advised me to remember that I am speaking before an audience of dedicated if not educated Harvard men in the absence of their ladies – most of whom are suspicious of Democrats and inclined to accept Artemus Ward's description of Harvard College: "This celebrated institution of the learnin' is presently situated in the bar room of Parker's on School Street, and has poopils from all over the country." And at this late hour I recalled some words of caution drawn from Fair Harvard:
"After the several intellectual labors of the day, it is not the infrequent custom of the ingenuous youth of Harvard to refresh the weary mind with convivial ale, the social oyster, jolly ale, and conversation upon topics of less profundity than those that usually occupy the thoughts of young truth-seekers."
Knowingly that I am speaking to the youngest and merriest of all Harvard youths – the members of the Harvard Club of Boston – on the occasion which marks their passage into adolescence – I would best leave with you at once the serious observations I intend to make.
But, I cannot resist first telling you of a dream I had during a restless night in which the responsibilities of my task tonight weighed on me. I dreamt that the Lord came into my bedroom, anointed my head, and said "John Kennedy I hereby appoint you President of Harvard University." Nate Pusey said, "That’s strange, Jack, because I, too, had a similar dream last night, in which the Lord anointed me and declared me President of the Ivy League." And McGeorge Bundy said, "That’s very interesting, gentlemen, because I had a similar dream last night – and I don’t remember anointing either one of you!"
I want you to know that the awesome presence of some of the authorities of the University has tempered me considerably and I shall be careful how I speak. As a result of the heavy obligations imposed on me by service as an Overseer, I recently took notes of one of the statutes of the University, promulgated in 1655 and freely translated from Latin as follows:
"No scholar shall go out of his chamber, without coat, gown, or cloak; and everyone, everywhere shall wear modest and sober habit, without strange ruffianlike or new fangled fashions, without all lavish dress or excess of apparel whatsoever; nor shall any wear gold or silver, or such ornaments except to whom upon just ground the President shall permit the same; neither shall it be lawful for anyone to wear long hair, locks or foretops, nor to use curling, crisping, parting or powdering their hair."
Notwithstanding the risks to my political future, I made appropriate arrangements with my barber for this evening.
Speaking of the Board of Overseers to which my alumni friends elected me last year, let me give you a brief account of my stewardship. Brief it will be, since it takes much more time to describe this position than to indicate what it does.
In titled dignity and conviviality, this body most nearly parallels the House of Lords; in its dispatch of business and unity of will it most resembles the supreme Soviet. The formal business of each meeting is conducted with a swiftness and under the spirit of a legislative strategy which is almost breathtaking to one like myself accustomed to the torturous deliberations of the U. S. Senate. It would therefore be rash for a rookie like myself to comment further on the State of the Union in Cambridge indeed, I know more as an Overseer about the Eutopian [sic] Harvard which may exist after it has been enriched by 82 million dollars than about the Harvard now staggering under the ____________ [sic] of a half-billion dollar endowment.
Let me confess, however, that I have derived from these meetings of the Overseers some sense of relief – or at least a sense of shared adventure. For it is increasingly obvious that the human condition excludes neither politics, business, nor education. The government of a university and the government of the nation seem to have some common attributes – each is conglomerate, old line departments never seem to be abolished, jurisdictions overlap, coordinators coordinate, committees proliferate, and budgets swell.
I must also admit to having brought some of the bad habits of the Senate to this position in Cambridge. I began to hear that the visiting committees of the Overseers have learned that my good friend and colleague, Senator Joe Clark, had already snatched two chairmanships. Not to be outdone, I went to Harvard’s own Lyndon Johnson, Mac Bundy, and requested at least equal treatment. Dean Bundy quietly lectured me on the harsh realities of the seniority system and offered me the chairmanship of the committee to visit the Arnold Arboretum. This was a sobering experience and seems to be Harvard’s way of hazing a neophyte member of its most exclusive club, the Board of Overseers.
I am, however, in the fortunate position of not relying on one constituency alone, and I come to you tonight as a refugee from a very exclusive public school known as the United States Senate. There the course of instruction is often difficult, the recesses few and short and the recitations so lengthy that the entire class is frequently kept after school. There are, moreover, two major difficulties to this school on Capitol Hill: first, it is not always possible to tell the teachers from the students; and secondly, while many fathers are clamoring to have their children admitted to the school, no student ever wants to graduate.
I suppose that you are eager to have the inside revelations of what is going on in Washington, and I shall not disappoint you. For these have been epic weeks in American politics. Let me give you a confidential capsule review:
First, I have been privied to the following recent conversation between the President and Secretary of State revealed here for the first time:
"Where did you go?"
"Out!"
"What did you do?"
"Nothing."
John Foster Dulles, the only bull who carries around his own china shop, has recently gained in stature and flexibility – he can now say "No" at any altitude. Well, Secretaries of State come and go – but never as much as Mr. Dulles. Our foreign policy was much clearer under the Democrats – just like Alcatraz, we emphasized containment and discouraged liberation. The only trouble was it contained us not the Russians. The important thing for the Democrats in the future is to remember the advice of Galsworthy
"Never say in power what you say in opposition—for if you do, you only have to carry out what the other fellow has found impossible."
It has also become obvious that our foreign policy makers need to learn a lesson from Venus De Milo – without arms, you lose your shirt.
Second, I am happy to report progress in the Geo-Fizzle Year. Last Fall our missile failures were a national joke. When the elevator at the Washington Monument caught on fire in December and smoke poured out of the building, one drunk staggered by and declared: "They will never get it off the ground."
Even when we got a satellite into orbit some Republicans were disappointed – they thought they had a firm pledge that Secretary Benson would be in it.
That brings me to a third area of national policy – agriculture. Out of the enormous complexities of this field, one inexcusable conclusion can be harvested: Mr. Benson’s program is still to get the government out of the farming business. The farmers' program is still to get Mr. Benson out of the governing business.
Fourth, what are the facts on the recession? Now here I can use the help of the educated Harvard men. There is an exhortation in King Lear that goes
"I will do such things—
What they are yet, I know not—
But they shall be
The terrors of the earth."
The straight-from-the-shoulder generality we hear in Washington, the bold platitude spoken without fear or favor remind me of these lines. And every bright spot the administration finds in the economy is like the policeman bending over the boy in the alley and saying cheerfully, "Two of his wounds are fatal – but the other one’s not so bad."
Finally, what about 1960? I can give you only a few tips from which you can draw your own conclusions. We do have lots of candidates. A recent AP survey asked each senator about his preference for the Presidency and 96 senators each received one vote. Republican feuds are diminishing. The Vice President and Sherman Adams decided to bury the hatchet—in Harold Stassen. Mr. Stassen announced that he would run for Governor of Pennsylvania. He has already been Governor of Minnesota – that leaves only 46 states in jeopardy. Sherman Adams is unfortunately forbidden from running now that the Constitution prohibits a third term. For the Democrats, one possible ticket would be Soapy Williams and Orval Faubus – that way the voters could hear a real debate of the issues without ever tuning in the Republicans. The Democrats are now split right down the middle – and that gives us more unity than we have had in 20 years. Mississippi is supporting Symington, saying they haven’t had a President since Truman – but then, neither has the country. We also have another Yale man, Averill Harriman of New York, after he runs for re-election this Fall against Nelson Rockefeller, the experts predict a close campaign – implying that both candidates will be very close – with their own money.
The modern politician – although not all of them I should make clear – knows full well that what he says but never writes can almost always be denied; but that what he writes and never remembers may someday come back to haunt him. The thought Job’s lament "O, that my enemy had written a book," has dried up many a politician’s pen. Only political memoirs and diaries published at the end of one’s career, and with the incalculable advantage of hindsight, are considered to be relatively safe. The only fiction to which many modern politicians turn their hand is the party platform – the only muse which they invoke is their party leader.
I have said in an earlier speech to a Harvard audience, but it bears repetition: the American politician and American scholar are dependent upon each other to maintain their common brainwork – a framework we call Liberty. Freedom of expression is not divisible into political expression and literary expression. The lock on the door of the capitol legislature, the capitol parliament, or the Assembly Hall – by order of the King, the Commissar, or Fuhrer – has historically been followed or preceded by a lock on the door of the University, the newspaper, or the bookseller. And if the first blow for freedom in any subjugated land is struck by a political leader, the second is struck by a book, a newspaper, or a pamphlet.
Under our form of government we must put our ultimate faith in the ability of ordinary men to make extraordinary decisions, in the capacity of the amateur to resolve the puzzles that baffle and even divide the experts. Yet almost all the great decisions of our time require an unprecedented fund of knowledge and power of subtle discrimination. Nearly all these questions have technological or scientific ingredients – disarmament, our weapons systems and strategies, a permanent draft or conscription policy, farm price supports, international assistance, the regulation of business or labor – the list has no end. The highest decisions required of our leaders and legislators require a knowledge of scientific gains made and scientific potentialities ahead which few informed persons in any branch of the government can fully grasp. Yet decisions must be made today and cannot await the compilation of complete clinical records: to be absolutely sure of each move we make, to drain each action of elements of risk could condemn us to an inertia which would erode our national strength and leadership.
As at no time in our history can we afford less a climate of hostility or suspicion between the academic or political community. One of our great natural advantages is our diffused system of education and political control. Yet it may have been one of Jefferson’s few mistakes to have placed the national Capitol where he did. Unlike some other great capitol cities of the world – London, Paris, Rome, Cairo, or Tokyo – Washington is a somewhat artificial creation, detached from the fresh current of thought and activity in our national life. Washington is a kind of ivory tower of its own lacking a real cultural tradition, a center of learning, and rarely serving as the arena for significant debates. Though you look to your political representatives for help and guidance, we transients in Washington also look out to you – not only the teachers scholars but also the many community leaders who have a regard for the concerns of the politicians. Throughout this country in many places there is first-rate work being done by scholars and citizen groups of the highest relevance to the working politician. Yet communication is often not made and the talents not mobilized. All too many people in the universities and professions have written off their political representatives as intellectual delinquents than as "Johnnies who cannot read." Yet when the effort of communication is made, the result is often amazing. During the past year, two books at least, both of scholarly pedigree, have had a perceptible impact on the thinking in Washington about foreign policy, Mr. Henry Kissinger’s Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, and Mr. George Kennan’s Russia, the Atom, and the West, books which diverge sharply on several points but both of which have contributed powerfully to the critical reassessment being made of our foreign policy.
What I have been saying, is, of course, reinforced by the nature of the Russian educational effort and the close connection between the effectiveness of our foreign policy and the inner strength of our educational system. We have always considered it a mildly amusing example of English self-esteem to learn that the Battle of Waterloo was won on the playing fields of Eton. Whatever its truth, it is no exaggeration to say now that the struggle in which we are now engaged may be won or lost in a classroom and campuses of America.
We have not yet witnessed the full explosive effect of Russia’s infatuation with technology and higher education. The contours of a nation’s mind can be changed only over a decade or a generation, yet the Russians have fashioned a system which in certain regard is superior to our own not only in numbers but in quality also. They have also begun in very recent years to realize that knowledge is the most precious and effective commodity of export which they have – especially in the uncommitted parts of the world.
Some of you may have read about the integrated steelworks which the Russians are building in India near the Bombay-Columbia rail lines. The Russians are underwriting it, planning it, supervising it. They have made two loans, both over one hundred million dollars. Repayable at low interest over twelve years. The plant, now half completed, will be producing one million tons of steel within two years. Around it is being built a modern town of fifty thousand designed along functional lines – architects being a pupil of Frank Lloyd Wright. Not only is Russia lending India substantial sums of money to import the large machinery required, it is also leaving a legacy of knowledge and trained personnel, whose values are incalculable. In addition, there is extensive technical training in the Soviet Union – and this is being operated, properly enough, through the United Nations Technical Assistance Program. The UN is paying their fare to Russia, and provides 1200 rubles a month for expenses and living costs. Russia pays for educational costs and winter clothes. India pays for the return fare, and for family expenses while the trainee is abroad. Nearly 300 Indians connected with Bhilai plant have already gone to Russia for six to eighteen months. Russian training programs, according to the best reports, are educationally first-rate and show little evidence of direct indoctrination or political pressure. The Soviets, in short, are confident that by their straightforward, politically antiseptic programs, they can win the faith of Indians by mere contrast with the meager efforts of Western government.
There is a special attraction and emotional appeal in the Russian example in the fluid pattern of events in the uncommitted world, to peoples full of social resentment and impatient for rapid social betterment and economic progress. Communism to them is the alternative with the glamour of novelty, of breaking fresh ground, of seeming to offer a disciplined coherent, an irresistible answer to the overwhelming problems of economic mobilization and takeoff. Indeed, it has been one of Marxism’s cruelest ironies – not lost upon the Russians themselves – that it has gained special force not in advanced industrial society but in those confused, transitional regions which have not so far created effective modern economic or political systems.
However, for Russia this is a two-edged sword. Although Soviet influences have grown in the newer nations of the world, they have waned in the older parts of its controlled dominion, in East Europe especially – in the troubles in East Berlin in 1953, in the Poznam violence early in 1956, in the bloodless revolution in Poland and the bloody though heroic failure in Hungary later in 1956. We have seen that appeal to liberty and intellectual freedom has a power of its own. The efforts made there to reclaim political rights – strongest among young students and laboring people, peculiarly exposed to Soviet indoctrination – illustrated dramatically that the liberties of the mind have their own power of revenge. The power and possession of knowledge make some indifferent and self-satisfied, but among others it leads to a self-awareness and a quest for justice which even the full power of the Soviet regime cannot throttle. Herein lies one of the greatest hopes and justifications for the ideals we are trying to sustain. Popular liberties and intellectual vigor have always been partners in the history of liberty. Mr. Walter Lippman was surely right when he wrote recently: "The challenge is not whether we can maintain or restore the balance of military power, necessary as it is to do that. The challenge is whether we can restore the intellectual greatness of the West, if not to its old preeminence, at least to a new quality."
This is the common problem with those concerned with education and with politics share: can a Democratic society with its freedom of choice – its breadth of opportunity – its range of alternatives – meet the single-minded advance of the Communists. Can we do so at a time when our decisions are more subtle than dramatic, our far-flung interests more complex than consistent, our crises more chronic than easily solved.
Can a nation organized and governed such as ours endure? That is the real question. Have we got the will and the nerve in an age where – as never before – our very survival is at stake – where we and the Russians have the power to destroy one quarter of the earth’s population – a feat not accomplished since Cain slew Abel? Can we carry through in an age where we will witness not only new breakthroughs in weapons of destruction – but also a race for the mastery of the sky and the rain, the ocean and the tide, the inside of the earth and inside of men’s minds?
Harvard’s answer at least is a clear one: she recognizes the obligation to spearhead new inquiry, if necessary, against dominant and accepted trend. She is not coasting on her reputation. Will the nation respond as well?
Charles Dickens visited Harvard in 1842. After only a short glimpse, this magnificent observer captured the essence of Harvard’s strength:
"Whatever the defects of American universities may be, they disseminate no prejudices; hear no bigots; dig up the buried ashes of no old superstitions; never interpose between the people and their improvement; exclude no man because of his religious opinion; above all, in their whole course of study and instruction, recognize a world, and a broad one too, lying beyond the college walls."
Source: Papers of John F. Kennedy. Pre-Presidential Papers. Senate Files, Box 900, "Harvard Club, Boston, Mass., 21 March 1958." John F. Kennedy Presidential Library.