Silent Death

Quietly and neatly, the Geography Department has had its relations with Harvard University severed. In fact, the entire process has been altogether too quiet and neat. Nobody has made any official announcements. Nobody has offered any official explanations. Except for communications within the department, and a terse statement by the Chairman of the Committee on Degrees for the Geological Sciences that "Harvard cannot hope to have strong departments in everything," nobody connected with the move has said anything of any kind about it.

In any decision so major as the involve the future of an entire field of study at Harvard, the Administration is obliged to offer an explanation. In this, case, when the move is so clearly in opposition both to educational trends throughout the nation and to established policies at Harvard, the silence is particularly unfortunate. Not only the students and Faculty members directly affected by the move, but also geographers and geography departments throughout the country, as well as persons involved with related fields, will want to know and ought to be told the reasons for this seemingly retrogressive decision.

At its meeting this afternoon, the Faculty of Arts and Sciences should break through the silence. It must not accept the dissolution of the Geography Department as a fait accompli. Disinterested members of the Faculty should request that the reasons for this dissolution be announced. And unless the announcement is convincing, they should initiate an investigation of the Administration's decision. No such major policy ought to be determined and settled upon under conditions ever remotely smacking of a political intra-departmental coup d'etat.