Serge Lang Hits Lack of Student-Faculty Shelter

Serge Lang, self-appointed investigator of university administrations, said last night that "universities simply are not providing the shelter they used to."

Lang, professor of mathematics at Columbia, cited four examples of administrative failure to protect members of an academic community.

He termed most administrators "stupid, misinformed, and spineless"--the result, he said, of being "well-meaning and devoted." The failure of Berkeley officials to present the real cause and standing of the 1964 Free Speech Movement was one instance he mentioned. Lang said that national newspapers had misrepresented the Movement's structure by claiming communist influence. "The blame," he stated, "must be on the administrators who allowed that to occur."

The best way to approach a University administration is "through channels," Lang said, because student protests usually introduce technicalities which can be used by the administration to confuse the original issue.

Lang was disturbed by university and government complicity in purely social areas. "Even if a project is benign, it is basically wrong. It sabotages the aims of a university for free inquiry, and is a betrayal of academic standards."

Undergraduates, Lang said, are in the best position to question policies because they are "not subject to economic and political pressures which affect their elders."