Light on the Hill, Volume II
Miller, Russell
1986
THE FLETCHER SCHOOL OF LAW AND DIPLOMACY celebrated its twentieth anniversary in 1953, the same year that Nils Y. Wessell was elected to the Tufts presidency. The school had almost ceased to exist during World War II, but with the return of peace and under the leadership of Robert B. Stewart, beginning in 1945, it experienced a rebirth of vigor and a renewed sense of mission. | |
Its primary aim, as originally conceived by its founders, was "to offer a broad program of professional training in international affairs to a select group of graduate students." The program was designed essentially to train for careers in the State Department and the diplomatic service of the United States, in the United Nations and other international agencies, and in international business, finance, and journalism. The program likewise offered advanced training for careers in research and university teaching in international affairs. The school thus undertook to provide a comprehensive background in all major fields of international relations necessary for careers in any of the related professions. | |
Eight fields of study were offered in the 1950s: international law, international organization and administration, world politics, diplomacy (American, European, Middle and Far Eastern, and Latin American), and international economic relations (trade, commercial policy, and finance). The total curriculum was organized at first into three broad divisions: international law, organization, administration, and world politics; diplomacy; and international economic relations. In order to insure breadth, distribution of courses among the three fields was required. A fourth division (political institutions and systems) was added in 1965, when work in three of the four divisions began to be required. | |
The weakest spots in the curriculum when Stewart became dean were thought to be in regional diplomacy, where the number of course offerings was "thin and scanty," especially in the areas of the Middle East and Africa. The school was slow at first to develop | |
318 | enthusiasm for so-called "area studies," although it was admitted that some attention needed to be paid to principal world regions. A start had been made, however, by 1955-56, with the offering of a single course on the economic development of underdeveloped areas. |
From the point of view of faculty organization, the school was operated very simply in accordance with bylaws adopted in 1956. The faculty was organized very minimally, with an executive committee and three subcommittees: admissions and scholarship, curriculum and requirements for degrees, and library. A high proportion of faculty were part-time, holding their primary assignments at other institutions in the Greater Boston area. | |
The school offered the degree of Master of Arts (MA), Master of Arts in Law and Diplomacy (MALD - a degree unique to its curriculum), and the PhD. The MA was a one-year program, requiring an oral examination rather than a thesis, and was intended primarily for mid-career and government personnel assigned to the school. The MALD, originally a one-year program, was extended to two years in 1958, and required a seminar paper instead of a thesis; in 1975 it was adopted as Fletcher's "standard" degree and became a prerequisite for the PhD. The PhD ordinarily required a minimum of three years, two of them in residence, and the customary dissertation. | |
The admissions policy was highly selective, enrollment of entering students each year being at first limited to fifty. One factor in its growing success was the attraction of "students of exceptional caliber," drawn from a wide geographical range. They came not only from almost every one of the United States but also from almost forty foreign countries in 1953. Impetus was given, beginning in 1949, to the development of an even more cosmopolitan student body by the enrollment of career Foreign Service officers from the State Department, attracted particularly in the 1950s by the program in international economic relations. This had been embodied in the William L. Clayton Center for International Economic Affairs, established in 1952. The creation of the Center was described by President Wessell as "the most important step forward taken by the school in its whole twenty-year history." Among its activities was the sponsorship of a series of annual public lectures by prominent individuals in public service. The first Clayton Lecture was delivered in 1957 by Dean Acheson, then Secretary of State, followed by Lester B. Pearson of Canada, Paul-Henri Spaak, and Eugene R. Black. The fifth lecturer (1962) was Walter Hallstein, president of the European Economic Community, and the one in 1963 was United States Senator William Fulbright. | |
319 | After World War II the school also inaugurated training for foreigners in their own diplomatic services. The Fletcher School, beginning in 1949, trained Pakistan's first career diplomats as well as providing training for personnel from India and Thailand. During the 1950s the largest number of foreign students at Fletcher came from Asia. |
In a retrospective report in 1953, Dean Stewart expressed general satisfaction with the school's role in "the training for leadership in international affairs . . . [combining] a general educational approach with professional orientation and objectives." More than 700 individuals had been graduated from the school by then, most of whom occupied positions of considerable responsibility and prestige. By the time the school celebrated its twenty-fifth year in 1958, of the 950 graduates, more than 350 were in diplomatic and public affairs careers, both American and foreign; 150 were employed in the field of international finance; and 150 had entered the academic profession. The first formal steps were taken in 1957-58 to organize a Fletcher School Alumni Association, and the first issue of the Fletcher Alumni Review appeared in the fall of 1957. Alumni Day was celebrated on 27 October each year, marking the anniversary of the founding of the school. Dean Stewart made special note of the fact that the Fletcher School ranked higher than any major institution in the country in the percentage of students passing the United States Foreign Service examinations. While the national average was 20 to 25 percent, the Fletcher average was between 70 and 75 percent. However, the school's positive record of accomplishment in the 1950 was counterbalanced by some significant negative factors. The central problem was finance, aggravated by an almost stationary original endowment of $1 million which had been inadequate from the very start. The only substantial addition since 1933 had made possible the Clayton Center. Attention was called in 1953 to the need for an additional endowment of at least half a million dollars to make up for current reserves which were being depleted at a rate of $17,000 a year. It was estimated that they would be completely gone in five years unless other sources were made available. The total operating budget for 1955-56 was $263,000 and the school accumulated a deficit of $20,400 that year. | |
Capital needs (buildings and endowment) were estimated at $10 million in 1958. The Henry J. Braker Professorship of Commercial Law, originally held by a member of the Arts and Sciences faculty, was finally assigned to the Fletcher School in 1958, after a long delay, together with the endowment which financed it. The first holder in the Fletcher School was George N. Halm, one of the few full-time | |
320 | faculty members, who retired in 1971. The school considered itself in a poor competitive position regarding financial aid; only six fellowships were made available from the school's own resources in 1959. The situation was alleviated slightly by the fact that between 1958 and 1960, there were sixteen Woodrow Wilson Fellowship winners in the student body. |
The school had to depend excessively on a series of rotating part-time faculty members drawn almost entirely from other institutions, notably Harvard. There were only three full-time faculty members as late as 1960. There was some dissatisfaction with what appeared to be overdependence on Harvard, which had been involved in the school from the time it had been established. It was pointed out that Harvard seemed to be the dominant partner in the original joint administration of the school. Since about 1960 the arrangement was described as "administered in cooperation with Harvard"; the responsibility was in fact in the hands of the Tufts trustees. Four of the six members of the Joint Academic Council in the 1950s were from Harvard. However, by the early 1960s the Council, which formerly held regular meetings, had become more of a symbol of cooperative relations than an active official body. An effort was then made to reactivate the Council. | |
The decision as to whether any Harvard faculty could be utilized at Fletcher in any given year was at the discretion of Harvard's president. The Fletcher School was also dependent to a great extent on the library resources of Harvard and had to pay an annual fee for the privilege of allowing Fletcher students to use the Widener Library. As the resources of the school were strengthened, dependence on Harvard for part-time faculty decreased steadily. Between 1960 and 1962, four new full-time faculty had been added. (Don D. Humphrey, Clayton Professor of International Economic Affairs; John N. Plank, Professor of Latin American Affairs; Marshall D. Shulman, Professor of International Politics and Soviet Diplomacy; and John H. Spencer, Professor of International Law and Diplomacy.) Shortage of space was another continuing problem, made particularly critical by the growth of the Edwin Ginn Library, and by the increasing tendency of PhD candidates to remain in residence after course work was completed in order to finish their dissertations. Enrollment of new students also frequently exceeded the limit of fifty which had been set many years earlier. | |
All academic operations were confined at first to a single building which was a remodelled undergraduate men's gymnasium built in the 1880s. Suffice it to say that it was by no means ideally suited for | |
321 | academic purposes. The situation was alleviated, although not completely solved, by the addition of a wing in 1964 which was used for offices as well as for much-needed library and study space. In a comprehensive report, "The Fletcher School ... A Survey and Appraisal," prepared in 1957, the "greatest and central need" was identified as an enlarged, permanent full-time faculty, followed closely by a strengthening of the library, a larger number of fellowships, and a more adequate physical plant. All of these needs could be met only with a greatly enlarged endowment and greater physical resources - needs repeated with only slightly differing wording and emphasis in almost every annual report of the dean for years on end. The library alone needed an endowment of $1 million in order to provide $40,000 annually. |
One of the long-standing sources of friction between the Fletcher School and the rest of the institution was the degree of autonomy which the school claimed. When Tufts officially became a university in 1955, no significant changes were made in relationships with Fletcher. The trustees did quiet some fears at the school by adopting a policy statement distributed to all Fletcher faculty, alumni, and students, indicating that the school would not be merged with any other division of the university but at the same time pointed out its close relationship to Tufts, both historically and financially. On the other hand, the Fletcher dean emphasized its separateness from the rest of the institution. He indicated more than once that a basic reason for the Fletcher School's eminence was its establishment as "a separate entity with its own unified curriculum ... its own independent programs, with its own exclusive facilities of classrooms and library and with its own dormitory and dining room life." Even though it shared the same campus as the Arts and Sciences faculty and the undergraduates, it did its best to lead a separate life, and was frequently accused of aloofness and lack of cooperation. It operated on its own academic calendar, which did not correspond to that of the division of Arts and Sciences. The necessity of providing dining services for Fletcher students when the rest of the university was not in session resulted in additional trouble and expense for the institution. | |
President Wessell, who consistently sought to build a harmoniously articulated university, was much irritated by the independent attitude of the school. He saw fit in 1954 to report this to the trustee Executive Committee, which unanimously approved his interpretation that "the Fletcher School is an integral part of Tufts College and not an independent institution." This in no way diminished Wessell's respect and admiration for the school, which he described in 1960 | |
322 | as "a star in our crown." However, he was ever vigilant concerning any action on the part of the Fletcher School that it might take credit not warranted. A case in point occurred in 1962, while Christian A. Herter, a distinguished public official and one-time United States Secretary of State, was serving on the Fletcher Board of Visitors. The Tufts trustees had established that year the Herter Fund in his honor. When arrangements were being made for the first Herter Lecture in the fall of 1962, President Wessell feared that the school would arrogate to itself all of the credit associated with the establishment of the fund, which was in fact "an all-University enterprise and not an arm of the Fletcher School." Soon after Tufts became a university in 1955 there occurred with the Fletcher School the so-called "battle of the letterheads" over how it should be treated in relation to the university. After the trustees had decided that the name of the school could appear either before or after "Tufts University," as long as its connection with Tufts was recognized on official stationery, the question seemed to have been settled. But it arose again in 1964 in spite of the fact that the Tufts administration had attempted for many years "to persuade the Dean to view the Fletcher School as a part of Tufts University and not as a separate institution." The efforts had been "singularly unsuccessful," and the alumni of the school in particular insisted on usually referring to Fletcher in connection with Harvard University but without any reference at all to its connection with Tufts. |
Another set of problems arising from the existence of the Fletcher School on the campus had to do with the possibility (and actuality) of overlapping and duplication of fields, programs, course offerings, and library resources with those of Arts and Sciences. These problems were all compounded by a lack of communication between the two parts of the institution. The matter of curriculum came to a head in 1962 when the Department of Government (Political Science) recommended the establishment of a PhD program which included international relations and international law as fields of study. | |
Wessell, who presided at the faculty meeting where the proposal was first discussed, immediately saw obvious overlapping and possible conflict with Fletcher School offerings in that field. The president immediately requested that Robert R. Robbins, chairman of the Government Department (who also taught one course in the Fletcher School), consult immediately with Fletcher personnel about the proposed program. The result was a decision that the offerings of each part of the university would continue to be separate, and that the Government Department would continue to offer courses in | |
323 | international relations as part of a well-rounded program but would make no effort to recruit students for specialization in that particular field. In the advertising for the Government Department, potential students whose primary interests were in international relations were encouraged to contact the Fletcher School. |
Almost simultaneously, in 1962 the Government Department also proposed the establishment of an interdisciplinary Atlantic Community Studies Center which would offer the PhD and would clearly duplicate part of the curriculum of the Fletcher School. The program would have been supported largely by a grant from the Ford Foundation, if obtainable. President Wessell immediately saw the potential duplication with part of the Fletcher program and cautioned about adopting such a plan. Discussions about the feasibility of an Atlantic Studies Center continued nonetheless into 1964, and an ad hoc Arts and Sciences-Fletcher committee was created to consider it. The five Arts and Sciences departments most closely involved even submitted sample course lists. However, the anticipated support from the Ford Foundation was not forthcoming, and the proposed program never came into existence. Although the Fletcher School had accepted a role of some sort in the program "in principle," whether the school and the division of Arts and Sciences could have actually cooperated in a harmonious way remained a moot question. | |
One problem for which the Fletcher School was in no way responsible became visible in the early 1950s, and was associated nationally and internationally with the McCarthy era in American politics. It adversely affected enrollment, albeit temporarily. A reduction of personnel in Foreign Service areas was accompanied by a rash of loyalty and security investigations and dismissals which resulted in a discernible drop in public esteem and public confidence in diplomatic personnel. There was a simultaneous failure to recruit newcomers. Between the summers of 1952 and 1954 "not a single officer was appointed to the beginning rank of [the] Foreign Service." The unfavorable atmosphere not only had a naturally negative impact on Fletcher alumni morale but resulted in a significant drop in interest in foreign careers among undergraduates nationwide. Total enrollment at Fletcher dropped from ninety in 1953 to sixty-eight the following year. There was a shift in student career interests from government service to such comparatively non-sensitive areas as teaching and business, and to a correspondingly increased interest in earning a PhD. The largest number of doctorates awarded so far in the history of the school in any one year (thirteen) was in 1955-56. The situation did improve after recruitment was resumed by the State Department later in 1954, and after the discrediting of the | |
324 | Wisconsin senator and his tactics. Some twenty-five Fletcher graduates entered the Foreign Service in 1955. The situation which had arisen in the 1950s and adversely affected Fletcher enrollment and student interest in foreign service was repeated briefly some twenty years later. For the first time in anyone's recollection, not a single graduate in 1972 entered the United States Foreign Service. There appeared to be a general lack of interest, aggravated by disaffection with government policy. There was a general feeling that Henry Kissinger's "personal diplomacy" had become the dominant element and that his office rather than that of the State Department was actually determining foreign policy. |
As befitted an exclusively graduate facility, the Fletcher School faculty accumulated and maintained an impressive record of research and publication. In 1953 the newly created Clayton Center prepared a study of international trade policy issues, published by the United States Chamber of Commerce. A two-year grant from the Rockefeller Foundation made possible a study of United States commercial policy since 1932, and in 1954 the fourth volume of the Fletcher School Studies in International Affairs was published. A Ford Foundation grant funded a four-year study of the Social Democratic parties in Japan, directed by Allan B. Cole, a specialist in Far Eastern affairs, and comprised three volumes when completed. Leo Gross, a senior member of the faculty, served for many years as a member of the Board of Editors, and later as editor, of the American Journal of International Law. George Halm's two major works - Comparative Economic Systems and Economics of Money and Banking - went through several editions and translations into foreign languages. Albert H. Imlah and Robert R. Robbins, both holding their primary appointments in the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, contributed major works, as did Ruhl J. Bartlett, whose Power and Policy: Two Centuries of American Foreign Policy, appeared in 1963. | |
Soon after the school had been established, a Board of Advisers had been created which, over the course of years, went through a variety of changes of name and degrees of activity. It had become almost moribund by the late 1950s, so was transformed during 1960-61 into a Board of Visitors. New life was infused into it, and Dean Stewart considered its revival as "the Fletcher School's greatest accomplishment" for that year. One of the first responsibilities of Lieutenant General James M. Gavin (Ret.), the chairman, was to solicit funds for the school. Thomas D. Cabot became acting chairman in 1961 but Gavin resumed the chairmanship in 1963 until his retirement from the board. Gavin's retirement was clearly of the utmost importance, for in 1960, total endowment fund assets comprised less | |
325 | than $1.8 million. Of the approximately $95,000 in endowment income in 1959-60, it was obvious that every available cent was used. During 1961-62, members of the Board of Visitors personally contributed, pledged, or solicited some $200,000 to support faculty and fellowship programs. |
Some of the constant pressure on physical plant was lessened somewhat when, in the early 1960s, the university turned over to the school two undergraduate men's dormitories (Dean and Fletcher Halls). This made possible the relinquishing of the Wilson House-Blakeslee House complex as a student residence and dining center. Enlarged dining facilities in the new wing attached to Goddard Hall were opened in 1962. The original plan, outlined in 1960, had been to construct a connecting building between Goddard and Dean Halls and to provide a dining hall between Dean and Fletcher Halls, but later changes resulted in the razing of Dean Hall and the addition of an enlarged extension of Goddard (known as Mugar Hall in honor of a benefactor). | |
This expansion was made even more necessary by the decision to more than double existing enrollment of students taking full programs. The number of entering students exceeded 100 for the first time in 1961. This, in turn, together with the need for expanded course offerings, made desirable the projection of a faculty of at least fifteen full-time members. In actuality, there were eight full-time faculty in 1963. The high degree of selectivity of the student body was maintained consistently. The entering class of 75 in 1963 was drawn from a pool of 413 applicants. | |
After nineteen years, Stewart resigned from the deanship at the end of the 1963-64 academic year to engage in full-time teaching at Fletcher. On the eve of his resignation, the dean outlined the financial state of the school, which he described as "continued precariousness." He submitted his report to both the Tufts trustees and the Board of Visitors. The school's annual budget for 1962-63 was approximately $440,000, of which income from endowment furnished only $104,000. Tuition and other operating income was about $205,000, leaving a gap in excess of $100,000 which had to be made up by uncertain annual gifts. Assured annual income of at least that amount had to be provided just to maintain programs at existing levels. For the future, he anticipated an expenditure of almost $300,000 to provide the necessary faculty, library, financial aid, research, and administrative funds. | |
Stewart's successor, Edmund A. Gullion, was a career diplomat rather than an academician. His first post had been as a vice-consul in Marseilles in 1937. He then held posts in Salonika, London, | |
326 | Algiers, and Helsinki, and was United States Consuleneral in Saigon from 1950 to 1952. He served as American Ambassador to the Republic of the Congo from 1961 to 1964 and was Career Minister from 1962 to 1964. He was also, at one time, a member of the Department of State Policy Planning staff and Acting Director of the United States Disarmament Administration, As was to be expected, the new dean was an unqualified supporter of American involvement in Vietnam, believing that "both our national security and our national honor [were] deeply involved," and tried to show to demonstrators against the war in Vietnam the error of their ways. |
During the crisis at Tufts in 1969-70 over the presence of ROTC on the campus and protest over the enrollment of in-service military and other government personnel in the Fletcher School, Dean Gullion firmly supported the retention of ROTC units at Tufts and the continuation of mid-career trainees, both civilian and military, at Fletcher. Since 1950, mid-career and in-service trainees comprised between 15 and 20 percent of the Fletcher student body annually; some were there for one year only, while others stayed two years or more. A total of 152 such individuals had been enrolled between 1950 and 1970. There were nineteen in-service American trainees at Fletcher and seven foreign trainees in 1972. | |
Protest against the Fletcher School reached a physical climax in March 1971 with the fire-bombing of the office of the dean, with an estimated $70,000 in damages. The perpetrators were never officially identified. During the same year an unsuccessful attempt was made by some of the Arts and Sciences faculty to have the administration sever all institutional arrangements between Fletcher and the armed forces as well as with the State Department. | |
Gullion was convinced that the Fletcher School could contribute even more than it had in the past. As the Provost explained it, Gullion's aim was to "regain its place as one of the most distinguished educational institutions in the area of international affairs." Within two years of his arrival the new dean had "put the school into forward motion." Previously, it had been "somewhat like a Cadillac in a Volkswagen environment." All of that would be changed. | |
Gullion planned for a doubling of the budget in the next five years, and added Development Diplomacy to the areas to be stressed, together with international security affairs. The dean had in mind the dozens of new and independent nations which had emerged since World War II, most of which were considered "underdeveloped" by Western standards. With this new emphasis went plans to strengthen Fletcher instruction in economics. In the decade between 1964 and | |
327 | 1974 the student body in residence steadily increased in size, and the number of courses offered grew from thirty-five to ninety-two. |
The Edward R. Murrow Center of Public Diplomacy was established in 1965 in honor of the internationally know journalist and commentator and was formally inaugurated in 1966 by Vice-President Hubert Humphrey. Among its first activities were the sponsorship of a national conference on the uses of communication satellites, and the presentation of a Murrow Award to an employee of the United States Information Agency. A Latin American teaching fellowship program under the directorship of William W. Barnes was established in 1966, financed by a grant from the Ford and the Rockefeller Foundations, and summer seminars dealing with Latin America were also held. Twelve graduate students were selected for the fellowship program by Fletcher in 1966-67. The Edward L. Bernays Lecture series was also established in 1966. Gullion made wide use of specialists from various fields who made guest appearances at Fletcher, especially those in government service. During 1965-66 there were visiting faculty from the Department of State, the United States Information Agency, and the Agency for International Development, with their salaries paid by the federal government. In line with the new emphasis on Development Diplomacy, a special program for Nigerian civil servants was created. The school had expanded so rapidly by 1966-67 that there was growing concern that the close-knit "Fletcher Community" concept | |
328 | was breaking down. Enrollment of entering students had increased to 127. The Fletcher dormitory was rapidly being outgrown, and with forty-eight married men in the student body, a high proportion were forced to live off-campus. |
The chronic question of how best to integrate Fletcher with the rest of the institution remained as far from resolution under Gullion as under the previous dean. An ad hoc Arts and Sciences committee was appointed in the 1960s to confer with the Fletcher dean on how to establish closer relations, but nothing was accomplished in the single meeting which was held, after which the committee quietly disappeared. | |
One particular question was the relation of the graduate programs in the Departments of Economics, History, and Political Science to the Fletcher School. A positive step was taken when Fletcher made arrangements with the Tufts graduate school to permit cross registration. During 1972-73, Fletcher "found room" for twenty-five cross registrants. One or two members of each of the three departments continued to teach part-time in Fletcher, and graduate students interested in the teaching profession served as section leaders in some survey courses. A few Tufts undergraduates in the social sciences expressed their disgruntlement that the Fletcher School, unlike the medical and dental schools, did not give any preference at all to Tufts graduates. However, from one to four were usually admitted each year. | |
In September 1967 Dean Gullion prepared an inventory of the school for the Board of Visitors and outlined a five-year development program which would cost an estimated $5 million. When a fund drive was actually begun a year later, the goal was increased to $8 million, including $4 million for endowment funds. During 1967-68 a student exchange program, involving mostly second-year graduate students, was begun with the Institute of Higher International Studies at Geneva. A five-year International Development Studies program financed by the Ford Foundation and the Agency for International Development was introduced in 1969, and by 1972 had become active in nineteen countries, with connections that involved several foreign universities. The school expanded its activities by holding its first general summer session in 1968, when three courses were offered, with a total enrollment of twenty-two. The nucleus was a contingent of recent graduates of the Air Force Academy. | |
The school had expanded at such a rate under Gullion in the late 1960s that its expenses greatly outdistanced its resources. A deficit approaching $200,000 was created in 1968-69, and in the following two years exceeded $100,000 each year. The annual | |
329 | operating budget had increased to $1.4 million by 1970. Thirty-eight percent of income came from tuition and fees, and 51 percent from research grants and gifts; only 8 percent was derived from endowment, which amounted by then to $2.2 million. Eight percent of the budget comprised Fletcher's contribution toward Tufts administrative expenses and 3 percent was allocated by Tufts toward reduction of the Fletcher deficit. Until 1968 virtually all fellowship money was furnished by Tufts, which was charged against the Fletcher budget and which contributed to the size of the deficits. The school succeeded in balancing its budget for several consecutive years, beginning in 1972, due to a vigorous fund-raising effort, but over half of the instructional program continued to be financed on the uncertain basis of short-term grants ("soft money") rather than assured revenue. Gullion was emphatic in pointing out that "Fletcher raises all its own funds." Plans for a combined undergraduate-graduate program were discussed in a preliminary way during 1968-69 and in the following year, for the first time, undergraduates were allowed to audit Fletcher courses for credit toward their bachelor's degree. Dean Gullion made a great point of the fact that the plan had been initiated by Fletcher. The next step was to create a five-year combined degree curriculum in international relations. The new arrangement, intended originally to have been an honors program, went into effect in 1973-74. It provided that selected Tufts and Jackson undergraduates were to be admitted to the Fletcher School at the end of their junior year to complete the requirements for both the AB and MA. Two undergraduates were admitted for the first year of the program, with the expectation that as many as six could be admitted each year thereafter. The combined degree program (for which the Fletcher dean claimed the credit) was arranged without marked enthusiasm on Gullion's part. He continued to emphasize the point that "there does come a limit to the amount of dilution possible" in a program of instruction geared to graduate students who were more mature and career-oriented than most undergraduates. |
The dean's decision to become involved in the combined degree program was due largely to his conscious attempt to make a "contribution to the Steering Committee objective of more productive cultivation of the interface between graduate and undergraduate study." His allusion was to the report in January 1973 of a long-range planning committee appointed by President Hallowell in 1971 which had made a series of recommendations regarding the future of the university. (The lengthy report was entitled "Tufts: The Total University | |
330 | in Changing Times.") H. Field Haviland, Jr., Professor of International Politics who had joined the Fletcher faculty in 1968, was the school's representative on the Steering Committee. |
The committee's report had caused dismay and consternation among the Fletcher family - from the dean and faculty to the student body. They were visibly upset over the committee's recommendations, one of which was the creation of an all-university faculty "consisting of all members of all Tufts faculties and charged with responsibility for graduate programs, inter-school programs, and the establishment and review of tenure standards university-wide." The four "basic faculties," including that of the Fletcher School, would continue to exist but would be expanded "to encompass, in addition to members of departments traditionally associated with the schools, individuals from other schools currently involved in teaching students in that school." For purposes of making teaching assignments, the several faculties would be treated as one. The jealously guarded autonomy and self-sufficiency of each school and departmental faculty would be sharply diminished. Not only was the autonomy claimed by the Fletcher School seriously threatened, in their estimation, but its mission and its very existence as a distinctive unit were thought to be at stake. Almost as soon as the report of the University Steering Committee was made available, a Fletcher faculty/student committee was organized to prepare a response, and the alumni hastily organized the "Friends of Fletcher" to save the school from what they conceived to be complete extinction. The Executive Committee of the Fletcher School faculty immediately produced a document strongly objecting to the university report. They complained that nowhere was there any material in it on "the history, programs, and prospects of the Fletcher School" comparable to that provided for other divisions of the university. The school had never been consulted or asked to provide such information, nor had it been advised of the possible implications of the various recommendations for the future of the school. It seemed clear to them that the principal focus of the entire report was on the division of Arts and Sciences and on undergraduate education in particular, and that the graduate and professional schools - notably Fletcher - were given only token attention. | |
All kinds of dire predictions were made regarding the fate of the school if the recommendations of a unified faculty were carried out. The thrust of the entire report was to create turmoil and an aura of uncertainty which boded ill. Gullion warned that "many of our faculty and staff do not know what is to become of them (many may leave)." Many of the Steering Committee proposals were | |
331 | "illusory ... financially disastrous to Fletcher, damaging to the university, and probably illegal." Whether or not the dean was overreacting to the recommendations of the Steering Committee, the crisis passed when several of the faculties besides Fletcher (including Arts and Sciences) rejected the principal recommendations of the report, including the creation of a unified faculty and year-round operation, to which the Fletcher School had also objected strenuously. One positive outcome of the controversy over an all-university faculty was the submission to the administration in 1973 by Dean Gullion of a lengthy document containing twenty-nine proposals "for enhanced cooperation and new joint activities." Many of them were already in effect. |
The Fletcher School continued to strengthen its faculty in 1973 and 1974. One new position was filled by the appointment of John P. Roche from Brandeis University as Professor of Civilization and Foreign Affairs who also served later as the school's academic dean. Philip C. Horton, former executive editor of the Reporter magazine, was appointed director of the Murrow Center. During 1972-73 the school began a new pilot program in international marine affairs financed by the United States Office of Education. The school also became actively involved in a Law and Population program funded by the United States Agency for International Development. The program reached its peak in 1974 in conjunction with the observance of the United Nations World Population Year. During 1974 a program in International Energy, Resources, and Environment was introduced, and in 1975 arrangements were completed with Harvard for a joint Fletcher/Tufts and Harvard Law School degree program comprising the MALD and the Doctor of Jurisprudence (JD). An autonomous research group involving several Fletcher faculty was the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis, established in 1976. | |
By 1974-75, 70 percent of the courses were being offered by full-time faculty, and three times as much time was being spent by them on research and writing as on classroom teaching. Dean Gullion looked with immense satisfaction on the accomplishments of the Fletcher School, and in 1974 had stated that "we can now assert with some confidence that we are the best graduate school of foreign relations in the United States." One jarring note was interjected in 1973 into an otherwise successful year of Fletcher School operation. At the end of its first seven years, it was discovered that the Latin American Teaching Fellowship program had accumulated a deficit of a quarter of a million dollars, due to a combination of "rapid growth which outpaced management controls and collections" and faulty accounting procedures which it | |
332 | took several years to remedy. A temporary reprieve was obtained with a grant of $120,000 from the Ford Foundation in 1973, but the accumulated deficit continued. It was sharply increased in 1977 by almost $900,000. Immediate steps had to be taken to restructure the program to avoid a repetition of such a financial disaster in the future. |
An Asian Pacific program patterned largely on the Latin American model was introduced in 1976, but during its first year incurred a substantial deficit. During the following year so much controversy and so much protest developed over the advisability of accepting a $1.5 million pledge from a foundation established by Ferdinand E. Marcos, President of the Philippines, that only a portion was ever received. The grant was to have endowed a professorship in East Asian and Pacific Affairs. | |
Throughout his tenure as dean, Gullion aggressively sought to augment Fletcher's resources, and in most cases he was successful. One of his last acts as dean was to supervise, in 1976, the preparation of a program for capital funding. The two-fold goal was to enlarge in some fashion the inadequate building facility, and to acquire additional capital for endowed chairs, fellowships, and general purposes. Year after year, attention was called to the plight of the library, which was crammed beyond capacity into quarters long since outgrown. The Ginn Library, in a report of the Board of Visitors to the Tufts University Libraries in 1974, was called "a disgraceful mess." So the obligation to fund a new building which would include greatly expanded library space was "concrete and inescapable." Plans were formulated during 1975 to contruct a combined library and office building. The urgency of this underlined the simultaneous need for a major capital fund drive which would also decrease the necessity of relying on short-term funding. The Tufts trustees approved in 1976 a fund-raising effort by the Fletcher School to include $3 million toward a new library/office structure, plus $1 million to insure its maintenance. The financial plans for Fletcher were greatly increased in magnitude and were later incorporated into a university-wide, five-year capital drive successfully completed in 1985. | |
Dean Gullion, having reached retirement age in 1977, announced plans to conclude his career at Tufts at the end of the academic year 1977-78. During his last year, he divested himself of many of his administrative duties in order to devote the bulk of his time to fund-raising, with a total target increased by then to $12 million. Academic Dean Roche took over much of the day-to-day administration. | |
333 | Gullion's fourteen-year administration of the Fletcher School had been filled with political controversy but also with substantial progress. By 1977 the troubled days of the late 196os and early 1970s had receded. The budget had been balanced for the seventh consecutive year. Student morale was high, and alumni financial contributions set new records. The full-time faculty had increased from six when the dean entered office in 1964-65 to eighteen. In the period from 1971 to 1976, new capital endowment had increased by more than $1 million, and more was in prospect with the launching of an ambitious capital fund campaign. A trustee visiting committee in 1975 had been very favorably impressed with the entire school, noting only as a negative factor its continued isolation from the rest of the university. |
Gullion closed his deanship at Tufts in 1978 on a triumphant note. Thanks to Jean Mayer, who had assumed the presidency in the summer of 1976; to important contacts in the nation's capital; and to Gullion's own efforts, a Congressional appropriation was made to the university totalling more than $5 million, part of it on a matching basis. The purpose of the grant was to assist in the construction of a new building and renovation of existing structures for the Fletcher School. The end-product was not only the much-needed renovation but the construction of an Intercultural Center of impressive dimensions, completed in 1981, and used largely by the Fletcher School. With the exception of the financial fiasco associated with the maladministration of the Latin American Teaching Fellowship program, Gullion left the Fletcher School in good order when he retired. Its involvement with and connection to the "foreign affairs establishment" in Washington, D.C., and in foreign capitals, and its extensive range of foreign operations in spite of its relatively small size and inadequate endowment, put the Fletcher School competitively in the forefront of the seven comparable graduate schools of international affairs in the nation. | |