Greek Minister to Visit Harvard Tomorrow

The Minister of Education and Religion in the Greek military regime is planning to visit Harvard tomorrow afternoon.

Nikitas Sioris-a civilian who succeeded George Papadopoulos, the leading colonel in the junta, when Papadopoulos relinquished the ministry last year-is currently on a three-week tour of the United States. His host is the State Department.

After visiting M. I. T. tomorrow morning, Sioris will arrive at Harvard with a State Department escort for a 1 p.m. lunch at the Faculty Club with Dana M. Cotton, acting dean of the Ed School, and other Ed School officials. He will also stop at Widener Library and the Business School.

Although the visit has gone virtually unpublicized, several Harvard students and Faculty members have already registered complaints against Sioris's anticipated reception at Harvard.

Cedric H. Whitman, Francis Jones Professor of Classical Greek Literature, said yesterday that he had phoned Cotton's office to state "my extreme disapproval and the hope that it can be cancelled."

"His post corresponds pretty closely to the ministry of the interior," Whitman said. "He poses as an opponent of the regime, but it's impossible and ridiculous because he would not be in such a high post if he had something against them. He's a real minion of the colonels, and a hypocritical one."

John D. Elder, associate director of Field Education and member of the Faculty of Divinity, also said yesterday he had expressed reservations about the visit with the University Marshal's office. "I do think the present Greek regime is seeking to improve its image, but I have serious questions about the practices lying behind that image," he said.

"I think it would be unfair for that image to be improved by his being welcomed by Harvard in such a way that the University seems to be giving approval to that image and disapproves of those who protest against it," Elder added.

William Anderson, University Marshal-whose office is handling Sioris's visit-said yesterday afternoon that the Greek minister is only one of a larger number of foreign visitors which Harvard regularly hosts in connection with a standing federal "cultural exchange" program, and that "there's nothing political about this implied on Harvard's part."

But several anti-junta activists at Harvard have expressed outrage at the impending visit and are considering a picket line for tomorrow. One activist said yesterday, "There is hope that there will be no need for picketing because everyone hopes the visit will be cancelled."

According to Nicolas Ladopoulos, the Greek consul in Boston, the purpose of Sioris's visit is "to be exposed to as much concerning the educational system in this country as possible."

But several observers in this area, citing the regressive nature of Greek educational reform in the years following the military take-over in April 1967, have suggested that the visit is more a move by Greece and the United States-whose support for the regime has been extensive-to secure the colonels' political situation both here and in their own country.

Before the 1967 coup, the liberal regime of Pre-mier George Papandreou and the economic ministry of his son, Andreas, had emphasized the development of widespread free education. Nine years of compulsory schooling, free textbooks and free lunches for all schoolchildren were a feature of pre-coup Greece.

After the coup, however, the regime moved to reduce the period of free schooling and otherwise revamped the liberal arts educational system, which as one observer said, was "a traditional enemy of the right-wing forces" in Greece.

Dozens of Greek professors-as well as hundreds of other intellectuals and dissident political activists-were fired, jailed, or exiled for having "in the course of their professional and social lives attacked the established political and social order and the basic institutions of the established regime," as one education ministry document of January 1968 put it.

Schoolchildren are now taught in Katherevousa, a once-obscure mixture of ancient and modern Greek, which many observers consider a linguistic throwback designed "to keep information and education away from the masses," as one anti-junta activist said.

In addition, one observer stated, the schools and universities are filled with uniformed militiamen and with plain-clothes "stool-pigeons" to insure that students and professors do not take exception to official views.

Playing Politics

Thus, many observers feel, Sioris's visit is not connected so much with impending educational reform as with some political ambitions of the regime: "to impress the Greek-American community and also to make some capital at home," as one activist said.

In addition, observers suggested two other reasons for the visit: to attract skilled Greek nationals in the U. S. to migrate back to Greece and fill positions that the regime itself has emptied, and to intimidate other Greek nationals who would otherwise be more vocally opposed to the junta if they did not have family or friends in Greece.