HUC Sponsors Forum On Thursday Sit-in

One hundred and fifty students attended a Harvard Undergraduate Council forum on ROTC at Lowell Lecture Hall yesterday, which pitted liberals against radicals in a fierce debate over Thursday's sit-in at Paine Hall.

Student and faculty liberals--including representatives of the Student-Faculty Advisory Council and the Committee on Educational Policy--argued that SDS was responsible for the cancellation of the Faculty meeting, that student activism has already effected important changes in the University, and that the sit-in can only hurt the students' position.

Radicals responded that the administration was to blame for calling off the Faculty meeting since the demonstrators were not preventing anyone from entering the meeting room, that the tactics used were justified because of the immoral nature of ROTC, and that the purpose of the sit-in was not to disrupt the Faculty meeting but to influence the outcome of the meeting.

Dean Glimp was present at the forum but did not participate in the discussions.

Hoffmann vs. Putnam

Liberal and radical spokesmen for the Faculty were, respectively, Stanley H. Hoffmann, professor of Government, and Hilary W. Putnam, professor of Philosophy.

"It is outrageous that one group believes that it has the truth," Hoffmann said. "This is something that can be settled only by rational debate and not by one group," he added. Hoffmann condemned the sit-in as an "intolerable form of pressure." He said that the "clock has been turned back," because of the sit-in, adding that proposals for student representation would have been introduced at the Faculty meeting.

Putnam defended the use of militant tactics on behalf of moral causes. "As a philosopher, I do get depressed about the moral relativism that our colleagues in Social Sciences see fit to embrace," he said. "The idea that on a serious moral issue on which people disagree, neither side can claim the truth seems to me an intolerable position," Putnam added. "What people have, they have because they fought," he said.

James Q. Wilson, professor of Government and member of the CEP, said that the administration and Faculty has responded to the legitimate demands of students and that "a decision will not be made under moral duress." Wilson blamed the participants in the sit-in for preventing the Faculty meeting from taking place.

Tracy B. Strong, instructor in Social Studies, denounced the sit-in as "totally irresponsible and immoral" because it has split the anti-ROTC forces. "A popular front is not now possible," he said.