HARV ARD'S CORPORATE NEEDS

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The protests surrounding the scheduled visit of the recruiter for the Honeywell Corporation, manufacturer of anti-personnel bombs, serve to highlight how Harvard is linked to the War and to serving the corporate structure. These protests are justified and should be supported. We would like to point out that recruiting for Honeywell and other corporations is not confined to the days they interview. In fact, the real recruiting takes place every single day in the Harvard classrooms.

The content and structure of the educational process at Harvard is designed to prepare students for the corporate world. In terms of content, students are taught the virtues of capitalism and the impossibility of fundamental social change. The grading process insures that students become motivated by the external incentive of obtain a good grade instead of by the intrinsic enjoyment in the process of learning or the usefulness of the knowledge thereby obtained. This is just the kind of alienated mentality that characterizes most work in the corporate world. The hierarchical structure of classroom and university relations promote the acquiescence to authority that corporations need. Of course, the most elite corporate jobs require some initiative and ability to manage. But that is why Harvard is just a little less overtly repressive than non-elite schools.

Radcliffe, of course, serves the corporate needs in its own special ways. When the Honeywell recruiter comes to Radcliffe we wonder whether he (we have little doubt that it will be he rather than she) will be more interested in the typing speed or the height and weight of the women he interviews. Radcliffe recommends that both bits of information be included on women's resumes.

The presence of the Honeywell recruiter follows by only nine days the presence at Harvard of the Chairman of the Board of Honeywell, as a member of the Economics Department Visiting Committee. The close timing of the two visits may be an accident, but that they both come to Harvard is not.