Cambridge-on-the-Potomac

In the "100 Days" of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the complaint was that "when a Harvardman gets into the White House, he doesn't act like one." These days, when a Harvardman is about to get into the White House, all of Washington looks like Harvard.

Time was when Harvard's presidential jokes concerned majestic Abbott Lawrence Lowell, whose secretary once told a caller: "I'm sorry, sir. President Lowell has gone to Washington today, to call on Mr. Taft." With President Kennedy (Harvard '40) taking office this week, Washington has a whole new Harvard joke book--not boffo Broadway jokes, but subtle, like for the initiates.

P: Overheard in the Harvard Club: "Who's this fellow Jack appointed Secretary of Defense?" Second member, offhandedly: "Just a Business School grad."

P: Recipe for political success: go to Harvard, and turn left.

P:Government office coffee breaks are to be banned--but they will be replaced by class reunions.

Brain Tryst. The day is gone when Henry Ford boasted: "It is one to me whether a man comes from Sing Sing or Harvard." Kennedy's Cambridge-on-the-Potomac includes 17 high Harvard-men besides the President-elect. Four are Cabinet members-designate: Treasury Secretary C. Douglas Dillon ('31), Defense Secretary Robert S. McNamara (Business School '39), Postmaster General J. Edward Day (Law '38) and Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy ('48). Others include former Harvard Law School Dean James M. Landis, reformer of regulatory agencies, Assistant Defense Secretary Paul Nitze ('28), Federal Housing Authority Director Robert C. Weaver ('29) and Disarmament Adviser John Jay McCloy (Law '21).

No other U.S. campus stands to lose as many faculty men to the Kennedy "brain tryst." Three are gone: Economist David E. Bell (Budget Director), Law Professor Archibald Cox (Solicitor General), and Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences McGeorge Bundy (Special Assistant for National Security Affairs). Four more are reportedly to be named to still unassigned jobs: Professors Abram Chayes, John K. Galbraith, Arthur Schlesinger Jr. and Stanley Surrey. If conservative Harvard-men shudder at the rumor that New Deal-ish Historian Schlesinger may wind up as Commissioner of Internal Revenue, they try to balance the notion with the firmer rumor that Liberal Economist (The Affluent Society) Galbraith may be sent way off to India as U.S. Ambassador.

Yale Second. Harvard's President Nathan M. Pusey told the Harvard Board of Overseers' meeting last week that Harvard could only be "pleased and proud" with its Kennedy-chosen. Overseer Kennedy, present and voting, replied that he had picked men on merit alone, was astonished to discover their Harvard hue. "Recently," said he, "I was relieved to find a prospective appointee on the Yale faculty. Then darned if I didn't find out that he was a Harvard graduate."

To confuse matters, the reverse is also true. Harvard's Dean Bundy, for instance, is a Yaleman ('40). In fact, Yale runs second to Harvard in top appointments, with eight alumni, from Under Secretary of State Chester Bowles ('24) to Roving Ambassador Averell Harriman ('13) and Deputy Attorney General Byron R. ("Whizzer") White (Law '46). Yale has already lost three faculty men to Kennedy, expects to lose two more, including Dean of the Law School Eugene V. Rostow. The next four years seem certain to produce countless occasions when Yaleman will meet Yaleman in a Washington corridor and growl: "You can always tell a Harvard man, but you can't tell him much."

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