Cuba Protest Statement Evokes Varied Reaction

Last week the New York Times published an advertisement signed by 70 Faculty members protesting the "present drift" of the United States Government's policy toward Cuba. The statement has received wide coverage in the national press and in Latin American newspapers; it has inspired a series of four articles in the Boston American, moderately disapproving editorials in the Boston Globe and the Christian Science Monitor, and columns by Arthur Krock (who disapproved) and Max Lerner (who was interested in the dissatisfaction of "young intellectuals"). It has moved a considerable number of persons to write letters of counter-protest to the Harvard Administration.

The American articles, which were picked by several other papers in the Hearst chain, attempt to provide some background information about the men involved with the petition. One of them takes its readers from the statement itself to the home of one of the sponsors, Stephan A. Thernstrom, instructor is Government. The text, it reports, was not written by all 70 signers, but by four "young thinkers:" Thernstrom, H. Stuart Hughes, professor of History, Nadav Safran, assistant professor of Government, and Robert P. Wolff '54, instructor in Philosophy.

Under the headline "Red Hue Seen in Peace Plea," another story in the series notes that "a spot check of (The House Committee on Un-American Activities) files showed numorous entries on the records of some of the more prominent signers of the petition."

(According to one American reporter, the newspaper "cannot divulge its means of access to the HUAC files." Although the files are not always open to the press, they can be used "in certain ways, for certain things," he said.)

Reactions Startle Authors

These articles, and their implications about public, opinion, startled many of the people involved with the statement.

On the day of the advertisement, all the Boston newspapers--and many papers in other cities--carried the story prominently. At 6:30 that morning, Hughes was awakened by one radio station which wanted some further information. For the rest of the day, he remained an interpreter; reporters continued to interview him, and one Cuban exile reportedly spent fifteen minutes asking "you idea-makers to stay out of our affairs."

Both Time and Newsweek have used the statement. In Time, it was one of a number of items used as a takeoff for a plea to abandon the "nineteenth century concept" of non-intervention. According to one of the writers of the statement, the article is "a misrepresentation of our position." Newsweek devoted is full article to the statement, its main point being that Harvard was pitted against Harvard.

Letters to the Administration have largely condemned the statement, according to William Bentinck-Smith, assistant to the President. Few have come from alumni, he said; rather, they have been sent mainly by citizens "deeply involved with the counter evolution."