Four on Faculty Sign War Letter

Four members of the Harvard Faculty have signed a statement taking issue with a recent report by 14 scholars who warned that a Communist victory in Vietnam would likely lead to larger wars rather than a lasting peace.

The statement questions "the claims of these 14 to represent the unheard voices of academic moderates."

"Nothing in their statement conflicts with the basic tenets of the Johnson Administration's policies in Southeast Asia and we would not describe those policies as moderate," it says.

Jerome A. Cohen, professor of Law, Rupert Emerson, professor of Government, Benjamin Schwartz, professor of History and Government, and James C. Thomson Jr., assistant professor of History were the statement's four Harvard signers. Twenty-two other American scholars also signed.

The statement says that the report, which resulted from a conference sponsored by Freedom House, "indiscriminately attacks" all critics of the Administration's Vietnam policy by "falsely identifying them with the extremes of massive escalation or unilateral withdrawal."