Father Dunne

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Last week the CRIMSON carried an article concerning the Cambridge School Committee's resolution and the Blanshard Dunne Forum of February 10. That story quoted me as saying that Henry D. Alken '40, professor of Philosophy, acted "contrary to instructions" in his handling of that Forum as Moderator. This quotation does not tell the whole story, and it is decidedly unfair to Professor Aikes.

The fact is that the Forum representative thought that Mr. Alken understood that the speakers were to be more or less unrestricted in the scope of their discussion. Mr. Aiken, on the other hand, understood that the speakers were to be restricted to the scope of the program's title, "The Catholic Church and Politics."

Perhaps this ambiguity arose in part from the very ambiguity of the title itself. Mainly, however, a lack of communication between the Forum's representative and Mr. Aiken was the cause of the misunderstanding. The Forum had no induction of censuring Mr. Aiken for this misunderstanding and regrets that the CRIMSON could not report my remarks in full.

This one misunderstanding produced the chain reaction that included the two CRIMSON article of February 15 and 23. Father Dunne understood in advance that the speakers were not to be restricted, that a discussion of Blanshard's book was in order. Therefore, when he felt a restriction during the program and when the CRIMSON's reporter said that it took an hour and a half to come to grips on the scheduled topic, Father Dunne wrote his protesting letter to the CRIMSON stating that he did not know the topic had been changed. Then the Cambridge School Committee acted on the basis of that protest. The Forum then responded that Father Dunne did know the topic. He did, but he thought it had been changed, which it had not.

I sincerely hope that this will clear up a completely muddled situation. Anthony P. Nugent, Jr.,   President, Harvard Law   School Forum.