Beschreibung:

Kennedy Onassis, Jacqueline (1929-1994) Autograph Letter, Draft, Unsigned, and Carbon Copy of Typed Version, also Draft, [Summer, 1964], Hyannisport, Massachusetts. Five pages, written on recto sides only, in blue ballpoint pen on typing paper, and a five-page typed carbon copy, with "Dear Dick" added in Mrs. Kennedy's hand, in pencil. To Richard Neustadt (1919-2003) containing strongly worded, impassioned, and detailed objections to the way Harvard is dealing with the organization of the Kennedy Institute, Library and Archive, the Kennedy School of Government, and the President's legacy. All sheets with a central horizontal fold, edits in the manuscript version, slight edge toning, generally good, 11 3/4 x 9 in. "It should not come as any great surprise to you that I am not happy with the way the Institute is going. I would have kept this to myself, and tried to work with you to find a modus operandi which would be comfortable for you, for me, and for Harvard, had I not seen so clearly at our spring meeting that we are at cross purposes. Every one of the trustees at that meeting was disturbed--and for the first time all voiced their concern. You tried to reassure us, and I believed you, but the next message I received from you was that you thought it unnecessary to have another meeting of the Institute for a year. Then I knew that our objectives were completely different and that I must express my thoughts to you. They are these: I believe that rather than have the Institute have any dynamism of its own, you and Harvard would like to see it swallowed up in the School of Government. The School of Government is meant to turn out civil servants. It has not and will not turn out men like President Kennedy. It does not value above all things the inquiring mind, the fresh and original idea. If the Institute continues as it is, it will become a monument to everything that President Kennedy was not. That would be all right if Harvard had created the Institute on its own. I find it unacceptable when it was created by the love and grief and sacrifice and effort of those who believed in him most. Perhaps it is partly our fault that it has turned out the way it has, because we were still in shock when we were working to create it. We remembered that he had so recently gone up to Harvard to discuss the plans for his future Library. So we thought his Library the best way to keep his ideas alive. Working for his Library in those days helped us to overcome our grief, because we felt that we were still working for him--that perhaps we could ensure that his vision of a world that might be did not die with him--that we could create a climate where such visions could be nurtured--a place that might turn out men like him who could inspire and lead in the even more precarious decades ahead. To do this, we raised 20 million dollars for Harvard and we obtained for them at an unreasonably low appraisal 13 acres of land which they had always desired but could never have obtained had it not been given in the name of President Kennedy. We made it a center to which the members of President Kennedy's administration would wish to leave their papers, thus making Harvard the repository of most of the documents of this extraordinary period of history. Also, we brought to them the papers of Ernest Hemingway, for which other Universities would have paid a small fortune. And we let Mr. Perkins, who is Harvard's lawyer, draw up these arrangements! In return, Harvard eventually agreed to match our sum, and it named its School of Government after President Kennedy, thereby taking the Institute under its control. The only member of the family who was allowed to be a trustee at the Institute was myself--because it was thought that Robert Kennedy, who worked so passionately to raise the money for the Library, and Edward Kennedy, who persuaded the state of Massachusetts to give the land in his brother's name, might use the Institute as "a springboard for the dynasty,"