Franklin Lewis Ford (26 December 1920, Waukegan, Illinois – 31 August 2003, Lexington, Massachusetts) was an American history professor and dean.
From 1943 to 1946 he served in the U.S. Army Signal Corps and the Office of Strategic Services.
[1] On April 9, 1969, 300 students protesting several university policies, some related to the war in Vietnam, gained control of Harvard's principal administration building.
They threw out Dr. Ford and eight other deans and closed off the building's doors with bicycle chains.
... At the time, Dr. Ford declared that if the Harvard community did not "recognize that what is at stake is the freedom to teach, to inquire and to learn," then "there will be little point in pretending much longer that this is a real university."