Debate Council Accepts Challenge To Oppose Boston Socialist Group

After a month of heated controversy among its members, the Harvard Debate Council has finally agreed to defend capitalism in a debate against the Boston chapter of the World Socialist Party.

The WSP, whose stated object is "the establishment of a system based upon the common ownership and democratic control of the means and instruments for producing and distributing wealth by and in the interest of society as a whole," last month invited the Council to debate it some time this spring. They have debated several times in the past.

When the invitation was first considered last month in an executive board meeting it set off what Richard A. Levin '54 termed "one hell of a fight." Much of the controversy centered on a letter the Council recently received from a former member of the group who had run into trouble in getting his Air Force commission because of his participation in a previous debate with the WSP.

Serious Doubts

"This incident," said Levin, "raised serious doubts in the minds of some members of the wisdom in meeting the World Socialist Party. We are contemplating an alumni fund drive to increase our endowment, and, in the fact of possible Congressional investigation of Harvard, a group in the Council felt we would damage the fund drive by meeting the Socialists. However, a larger faction in the Council felt that we had a moral obligation to meet them and could not afford to compromise our integrity."