My introduction to university politics came soon after I arrived as dean at the School of Public Health. The university counsel, Dan Steiner, called a meeting of all of the deans on medical school... School of Public Health side of the river, and indicated that there was an incipient strike, not a strike, an incipient movement to... to organize into a labor union the employees of the various units on our side of the river, and the deans were asked to come together to talk about strategy as to how to deal with this. Dan, whom I liked very much, knew well that this might provide something of a problem for me because one of the organizers of the union was my daughter, who had at that time just become a secretary in the dean's office at the medical school, and on day one, when one of the deans asked her without much ceremony to get him a cup of coffee, she said, 'I don't remember that in my job description'. And, she... I don't think this was her... her turning to the union was a result of that, but she found practices of that sort and it was quite sympathetic.

It was at this time - I had just left Beth Israel Hospital where I'd been Chief of the Medical Service - and shortly after my departure another union was attempting to organize there. The lawyer that was representing that union was my older son who had just gone into the law and who became a labor lawyer. Finally, my third child, Fred, who was an undergraduate at Harvard at the time, was writing for The Crimson, and there were problems at that time because Harvard had investments in South Africa and the students were not happy with that arrangement and Fred was writing editorials for The Crimson, castigating the President for not taking the university out of that arrangement. At any rate, it seemed not to have a profound affect on my career and I confess that, at the time and ever since, I've felt some measure of pride at their activities.