Dean Bender Replies

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

I have no desire to revive an old controversy, particularly when for once the CRIMSON and the Dean agree on a basic, issue. Nevertheless, in justice to the Faculty Committee on Student Activities I can not let certain statements in your editorial of last Monday entitled "Bender on Communists" stand unchallenged.

Your editorial says, in effect, that my statement on the Eisler case represents a change in policy from what was done in the case of the New Student. There has been no change in policy or point of view on my part or on the part of the Faculty Committee. It is this Committee, not the Dean, which decides these matters and the Committee has a clear record through its whole existence of protecting the freedom of Harvard student organizations. My statement expressed my personal point of view which I have hold ever since I was old enough to think about such issues; it also stated the fundamental policy which the Committee and the University as a whole have supported for generations.

The CRIMSON'S assertion that the Committee's decision in the case of the New Student was based on the political content of the magazine is contrary to fact and is an unwarranted slur on a group of men who, because of their consistent support of freedom, deserve the backing and not the suspicion of undergraduates. The issue in the New Student case was not the political opinions of the magazine. It was simply whether the New Student was in fact a Harvard student publication and therefore entitled to recognition as such. If the issue had been the opinions of the group whose name was attached to the New Student, the Committee would have refused recognition to the HYD in the first place and would have denied it the use of Harvard buildings for communist speakers.

The CRIMSON is entitled to its opinion as to whether the New Student was a bona fide Harvard student publication or not. It is not entitled, on the record, to impute motives to the Faculty Committee or question its good faith. W. J. Bender

The CRIMSON has at no time meant to imply that the Faculty Committee refused recognition to the New Student because it disapproved of the magazine's political opinions. However, the CRIMSON has felt that in deliberating "whether the New Student was in fact a Harvard student publication," the Committee allowed the political nature of the magazine to have indirect effect. Here are two reasons for this belief:

1. In a letter to the Student Council last April, Dean Bender said, "The question of control will ordinarily be impossible to decide conclusively in the case of publications connected with fascist or communist movements whose code of morality is well known. So the Committee did not attempt to investigate the control of the New Student." We believe this shows that the politics of the New Student entered into the Committee's approach to the question of recognition.

2. As stated in Monday's editorial, "literary magazines have often printed issues written entirely outside the University without protest from University Hall." In addition, the Student Progressive has published at least one issue with outside authorship in a definite majority. There evidently has been no protest here. But one of the grounds on which the Committee denied recognition to the New Student was the fact of its outside authorship. The CRIMSON does not believe that the Committee banned the New Student because of what appeared in its articles; we do feel that the political nature of those articles led to an examination of New Student authorship which did not take place in other student publications.

The CRIMSON does not say that the Committee's decision was motivated by prejudice, nor does it say that bad faith was involved. We do contend that the Committee's method of studying whether or not the New Student was a "bona fide Harvard student publication" was influenced by the political nature of the magazine.--Ed.