The Mail SIORIS: 'ENEMY OF EDUCATION'

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Maybe one should have learned by now not to be surprised at anything the Harvard administration is willing to do, but I confess to having been amazed to read in Tuesday's CRIMSON that Nikitas Sioris, the Greek Minister of Education and Religion, was to be not only officially welcomed as a visitor to the University, but even accorded VIP treatment. Knowing as I do, partly from reports of friends whose knowledge is first-hand, but also from newspaper accounts, of the criminal acts of Sioris' ministry (in annulling elections to university chairs, in summary removals of incumbents, in overt interference with the right of teachers to teach what they think is the truth-all on fascist political grounds) I naturally could not imagine that Harvard would welcome him. To do so would be to welcome into the University the man who, by virtue of his office, counts as the chief enemy of education in Greece.

My sense of outrage is all the greater now that I read in today's CRIMSON that the University Marshal, William G. Anderson. smugly defends his action in whisking Sioris in and out of the University so as to prevent him from seeing those of us who felt strongly enough about the educational values for which Harvard ought to stand. to form a picket line to protest his presence as a guest of the University. If Anderson is guilty of saying, as the CRIMSON says he did, "Why should he see a picket line when he wants to see professors?" then he owes the Harvard community, as well as the victims of Sioris' ministry's policies, a profound apology.

Dana Cotton, Acting Dean of the School of Education, and the others who were responsible for routinely acceding to the State Department's request that Sioris be made welcome at Harvard have committed a grave offense against the University. Their affront to the faculty and students of the University, not to mention the people of Greece, can hardly be made up for by an apology, but this at least they owe.