Trumpbour, John, ed. How Harvard Rules: Reason in the Service of Empire. Boston: South End Press, 1989. 450 pages.

Several times a century, apparently, some American students take a look at their university and are horrified to discover that they are in the belly of the beast. It happened to Randolph Bourne at Columbia in 1917, it happened again at Columbia in 1968 (see NACLA's reprint of "Who Rules Columbia?" in NameBase), and it happened to me at the University of Southern California in 1969. That's when I discovered that the campus was owned by former CIA director and future Chile-destabilizer John McCone and his multimillionaire/multinational corporate cronies, the campus fraternities were controlled by future Watergate dirty-tricksters, and half of Ronald Reagan's California kitchen cabinet was on the Board of Trustees.

By now I'm more amused than outraged after reading How Harvard Rules, a collection of 26 essays from assorted academics who have kept their eyes open. Some concern rather esoteric issues, but these are offset with seven essays by Trumpbour himself, who was a Ph.D. student in Harvard's history department. He demonstrates an appreciation of Harvard's historical role, including its connections to the intelligence community.

-- D.Brandt
ISBN 0-89608-283-0

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