Word: hoffmann
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First, by bringing Washington officials to Cambridge, the Institute could provide those professors interested in policy problems with valuable information which is unavailable elsewhere. As a reciprocal gesture, Hoffmann continues, the professors could "psychoanalyze" the experiences of the officials and help them reflect on current policy problems. If this kind of relationship isn't achieved, the faculty-associates meetings will degenerate into social occasions -- too general to be useful...
...would hope that this kind of research would not turn into a recruiting or seducing agency calculated to attract young scholars to the Government," Hoffmann said. To ensure that it doesn't, he continued the Administration must not be presented as something beyond criticism. "I have frankly found the reaction of many of my colleagues annoying," he continued. "They act as if students didn't have the right to ask questions of policymakers...
...Hoffmann's main criticism of the Institute's programs thus far was directed at the Honorary Associates program. The large meetings with the Honorary Associates (McNamara and Goldberg) have only symbolic value --a real dialogue of any kind is impossible under this format. "We are all, by nature, voyeurs of power, but all we see in these public meetings is the political animal in his cage, and not in his natural environment." All too much time and energy is devoted to prominent public figures who can only either give the hard line or else be elusive and vague...
Instead the Institute should devote more time to lower-level officials, Hoffmann argues, because they are more at liberty to speak their mind...
Another problem which Hoffmann identified was the relationship between the Institute and the various departments of the University. Currently, the Institute is conducting undergraduate seminars without giving credit. A number of students, however, have complanied that they have to give priority to their credit courses before they can do any work for their non-credit seminars. If, on the other hand, the Institute decides to try to make their seminars for credit, they will run into a great deal of resistance from the Harvard faculty...