Profile Ernest R. May

TWO YEARS AGO Ernest May faced a small revolt in his American diplomacy course. A radical critique by four students charged that History 164b aided the Vietnam war and strengthened support for American foreign policy. The students accused May of reinforcing anti-Communist cold war mystique and substituting "semi-official clap-trap" -the memoirs of Sherman Adams for example-for analysis of U. S. economic motives.

"I was a little vague on their complaint." May recalls now, "It's undoubtedly a one-sided way to put it. but their complaint seemed to be that the course was not an indictment of American imperialism. It's not fair to say that Sam (Williamson) and I argue a moral defense of American diplomacy, but we do have an analytical framework."

May and the dissidents eventually got together in Kirkland House for a section, but "there was really no meeting between us," May says. Two years later the course has not apparently changed character. Sorenson's Kennedy and Truman's memoirs are still on the reading list. Sherman Adams has been scrapped for Eisenhower and Roger Hilsman replaces Sam Huntington. The only major change in philosophy is in an optional reading list for Latin America, in which W. Apple-man Williams and a dollar diplomacy history are now included. So far this year, May says, the only person outraged by the course is a Foreign Service officer.

May did not join the Harvard coterie until 1954. He was born with a flat twang accent in 1928 in Fort Worth and worked through an M. A. at U. C. L. A. on a Native Son of the Golden West fellowship. With a new doctorate he spent the Korean War as an historian for the Joints Chiefs of Staff. In 1954 he came to Harvard as an instructor and has wandered up the academic hierarchy to full professor.

There is said to be a clique of Kennedy men in Cambridge, a semi-official policy group waiting out of power at the Institute. "A very small crowd of JFK operator types getting ready to move back into government," one student describes them. Whatever the proper description. May is in the group. He joined Kennedy's Academic Advisory Council in 1963 and until this summer headed a faculty seminar in the Institute of Politics on the art and practice of bureaucracy. Since the summer he has resigned as director of the student seminar program, but he remains an untitled officer of the Institute. You can sometimes tell a man's polities from the company his car keeps. May still has a parking space in the Institute driveway.

In his appointment as Dean of Harvard College May undoubtedly realizes that he will have to deal again with unrest over Harvard's relationship to government policy. So far May has acted quietly to bridge feelings between the Faculty and administration and to aid curriculum reform. He says that this function is mediation, not advocacy. He is a diplomatic historian, cautious in his sentences, cradling a thin-stemmed pipe several seconds before answering any question. Small tie-knot, two-button grey suit and flat-top haircut: unobtrusive except that he seems to neigh when he smiles.

May will probably be most effective in healing division in the Faculty. He is staying clear of any affiliation with the conservative caucus now that he is Dean. Since his appointment he has gone to only one meeting of the conservatives ("with the full knowledge of the other side") in order to discuss possible agreement on the Heimert discipline proposal. He plans to meet with Walzer and the liberals soon.

In his attempt at unity May will not acknowledge any significant breach between Faculty and the administration, even over the touchy issue of Faculty discipline. It makes no difference, May says whether or not two Corporation members sit on a Faculty discipline committee. "All proposals for discipline have to go to the Corporation for approval anyway. If two Corporation members were present only in a non-voting capacity and didn't agree with the findings, there's not much chance it would pass anyhow."

Such divine right theorizing will not ease the Faculty's jealousy over powers of self-discipline. Still, May's straddle between faculty and administration as an Acting Dean should make the Faculty more confident that their interests will be handled with deference.

May is considerably less in touch with student politics. He still asserts that Harvard's educational-existential problems-and not R. O. T. C.-were the real cause of last spring's restlessness. Like Ford, May dealt with the Moratorium as an act of conscience instead of a political tactic. "The analogy I would use is Yom Kippur," he said. If the conscience of people in the community moves them not to take part in the University on a particular day, the Faculty ought to respect their conscientious beliefs." But May will not guarantee deference when the University itself is under protest. "The analogy with the strike last spring is harder. The strike didn't have an external character to it. It was directed against the University. I would take a different stance on October 15 if it was directed against the University."

The gap between May's thinking and student politics is consistent with his relatively conservative theory of foreign policy. May would deny that American policy is purposefully planned to protect investments or markets. No administration, May wrote in 1967, "ever has a coherent scheme or an overall plan." There are only some underlying tendencies "which give a basis for predicting how individual cabinet members or the President are likely to react." One of the "tendencics," he acknowledges, is the lobbying of Embassy staff for protection of local investment. "The people who have economic interests in a country are the clientele of the embassy people and embassy cables do reflect this association." But the Peace Corps mission, May says, is as effective a lobby as any. May explains policy decisions simply in terms of options available to the actor. With possible reaction from the Congress and press, "If the President is told that there is a possibility that some other Carribean area will go the way of Cuba, he really has very little chance to react except by asking how many Marines we can get there on what sort of a timetable."

Herbert Butterfield's chestnut is quoted twice in May's writing. Behind most international conflicts, Butterfield wrote, is "a terrible human predicament ... a terrible knot almost beyond the ingenuity of man to untie. The trouble with option diplomacy is that it makes no Gordian attempt to explain how policy could have been handled differently. "You put everyone in their place," says a critic, "and see how their options were limited to a, b, and c, and see that the war was tragic but inevitable. You can never make any criticism of American foreign policy this way." Without some analysis of what limits a President's options on a Fedielista coup to a trigger finger reflex, there is no way to construct a different policy.

To case student restlessness. May is planning a curriculum reform project over the year with advisory committees in each House and Department. He plans to circulate, "if you'll pardon the Washington bar-room term, a series of program packages." May says that past innovations, like Gen-Ed and tutorials, have not been completely successful because they were considered piece-meal. "Tutorial as it operates now bears no resemblance to tutorial as we envisioned it. There were a series of economic compromises all along the line. May proposes to look at the curriculum on a larger scale, allowing consideration of more fundamental changes. One proposal recently circulating is to require only a set of examinations for a Harvard A. B. degree, instead of residential course work.

May is probably overestimating the enthusiasm left for a curriculum project whose outcome is highly uncertain. There will be some stir nonetheless when a Harvard Dean stands up asking for change.