Pusey Relents, Will Allow Seeger to Give Concert Here

Pete Seeger '40 is coming to Harvard after all. President Pusey, in New York, changed his mind yesterday after the Student Council assured the University that Seeger's concert May 18 would be purely a musical evening.

Earlier this week the University refused to allow the Student Council Forum Committee to sponsor Seeger's concert on the grounds that the singer was appealing his sentence for contempt of Congress and that "lawyers advise the University against getting involved in cases still pending in court."

Roger M. Leed '61, chairman of the Forum Committee, and Gordon T. Milde '62, head of an informal group that arranged the booking, conferred with William Bentinck-Smith '37, Assistant to the President, for half an hour yesterday. Previously, they had contacted officials at M.I.T., Wellesley, and Radcliffe about holding a Seeger concert and had also arranged to use four non-University auditoriums in the area.

Bentinck-Smith gave Leed and Milde no assurance at the end of their discussion that any action would be taken. But, according to Leed, he telephoned them 15 minutes later and said Pusey had agreed to allow the concert under the following conditions:

1. That there be no political introduction to Seeger's performance. There had been a possibility that Mark DeWolfe Howe '28, professor of Law, would briefly discuss the First Amendment at the concert.

2. That there be no discussion of Seeger's case. Seeger had said he did not want to talk about his case in any event, Leed claimed.

3. That Forum Committee representatives meet with University officials before the concert to decide exactly what matters are not to be discussed.

Bentinck-Smith later explained, "There's a difference between somebody performing at Harvard as an artist, and appearing as a political figure." About the 1953 Owen Lattimore speech, which Dean Watson reluctantly allowed Lattimore to give, Bentinck-Sraith said, "If Lattimore was going to talk about China, that was all right. But it was not all right for him to talk about his own case."

The University's original objection, Bentinck-Smith said, was that it did not want a political rally held for Seeger. He stressed the importance of the University's not seeming to take sides in an unsettled case.

"There should be no Harvard seal on the thing, one way or another," Bentinck-Smith asserted.

A high Massachusetts official yesterday told one of the students involved that the reason controversial speakers in the past were not restricted by the University was the presence of McGeorge Bundy, former Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences and an outspoken defender of academic freedom.

When asked about Seeger yesterday, Oscar M. Shaw, general counsel to the University, said, "I never heard of him."