Professors React to Bomb With Sadness, Not Anger

If there were any important papers left Tuesday at 6 Divinity Avenue or 1737 Cambridge Street after two years of political activity directed at Harvard, they probably aren't there now. Professors reacted more with resigned depression than surprise or anger to yesterday morning's bombing of the Center for International Affairs.

"I guess I'm too depressed to be mad," said Thomas C. Schelling, professor of Economics and member of the CFIA. "How could you have anything but strong feelings when the place where you spend ten hours every day is the site of a purposely placed lethal event?

"I don't have any important papers, but I've removed from my office things like old income tax returns, sentimental correspondences with old students and some copies of a book I wrote."

General Suspicion

Gustav F. Papanek, director of the CFIA's Development Advisory Service located at 1737 Cambridge Street, said, "I've recommended to people they shouldn't work in the middle of the night and papers of which I only have one copy such as lectures notes I've begun to keep at home. But it's impossible to guard against this sort of attack. It's not a matter of reason. You can always take papers home, but the real damage has been the general suspicion that has been engendered.

"We've opened our records and personal correspondences to people who have quoted them out of context and distorted them for their own purposes. I was also at the receiving end during the McCarthy period and this is similar. You worry about what you say to students and colleagues. I feel this is more than unfortunate.

"I feel the people on the CRIMSON should feel some responsibility for an action that's been taken following an article in which they suggested that very action," Papanek added.

[In an article published Oct. 22, 1969 in Dump Truck, the CRIMSON supplement, Richard E. Hyland '70 said, "The only reason I wouldn't blow up the Center for International Affairs is that I might get caught." Hyland's article was in response to a CRIMSON editorial condemning terrorism on campus.]

Stanley H. Hoffmann, professor of Government, received applause when he told his students yesterday morning in Lowell Lecture Hall that he found the bombing "unjustified and despicable." Then he continued his lecture on primitive warfare.

Richard W. Bulliet, assistant professor of History, is the cousin of Robert Fassnacht, the graduate student killed in the August explosion at the University of Wisconsin. "The fact that I'm in 1737 Cambridge Street along with the DAS doesn't make me very happy. I intend to take the book I'm working on out of there as soon as possible. Last year there was a bomb threat in 1737 and everyone took it very casually. Next time, I'm running to the Square.

"But the threshold for violence has

risen to the point where nothing is a surprise anymore. We'd have been naive not to have expected this," he added.

Disingenuous Reaction

Arthur MacEwan, assistant professor of Economies, is a research fellow of the CFIA but has severely criticized its operation in the past. He said last night, "The whole reaction to this sort of violence by the officials of our society is disingenuous. I see no particular reason a support institution to America's violence in South Vietnam should be viewed as off-limits to violence.

"The important question is what this does to the building of a radical movement in this country. This type of violence does not seem to me to serve that end. But all the consequences of it are still unclear. I'm not concerned if the bombing was morally justified."

Seymour Marin Lipset, professor of Government and Social Relations, who has written extensively on student revolt, said last night, "Basically, this means the activist stage of student protest is over.

"When people can't get mass support, they resort to terrorism. Bombings become an obstacle to earlier types of mass action like picketing and demonstrations. They are very ineffective politics. I expect they will continue throughout the country. It's not nice, but it's nothing to get excited about." but it's nothing to get excited about."

This is little comfort to Bulliet, how-includes the original innocent by-stander."