Two Professors Circulate Open Letter to Kissinger Asking End to the War

Two professors are circulating an "open letter from Harvard Faculty to Henry Kissinger" which urges Kissinger to pursue "a policy of genuine peace in Southeast Asia" or withdraw from the national Administration.

Herbert C. Kelman, Cabot Professor of Social Ethics, and Everett I. Mendelsohn, professor of the History of Science- both outspoken opponents of the Vietnam war- sent the letter to all Faculty members on March 16, along with a request to join them in withholding payment of the telephone excise tax in protest against the war.

They plan to send the letter to Kissinger with additional Faculty signatures and then release it early next week. The CRIMSON obtained the text yesterday from another Faculty source.

While chastising Kissinger for his involvement in Administration strategy, the letter defends his acceptability in the Harvard community. Addressing Kissinger as 'Dear Colleague,' it says in part, "We find the notion that a university or one of its units might 'punish' a member because of political differences to be completely reprehensible."

"We do not regard you as an immoral man," the letter adds. "Yet you are one of the key architects and administrators of an immoral policy. Starting with the most decent and humane intentions, a man can become caught up in and locked into a set of policies that negate everything he is trying to achieve. We are convinced that this is what has happened to you."

The letter concludes by saying, "We hope that you will renounce this policy; that you will use your influence to move the administration to a policy of genuine peace in Southeast Asia; and, if you are unsuccessful in promoting a reversal in policy, that you will dissociate yourself from the current administration and its destrucof Indochina."

(The complete text of the letter follows this story.)

Kissinger resigned his position asprofessor of Government and member of the Executive Committee of the Center for International Affairs to become President Nixon's national security advisor in January 1969.

A month before Kissingers tenure ended last Jan. 20, the Government Department unanimously voted an expression of hope that he would return, and decided to hold vacant his professorship for at least a year.

Kelman said of the open letter last night, "My own motivation was primarily that I felt we had not really used what little leverage we had as colleagues in an effective way."

"I'm not in favor of the idea of political punishment, but I'm also not in favor of the idea of ignoring basic moral issues and papering them over with 'we're all colleagues and friends and gentlemen,'" Kelman added.

Mendelsohn said earlier yesterday that the purpose of the letter was to make clear "the difference between Henry Kissinger's acceptability as a colleague-which should be based on his scholarship-and the policies he's engaged in designing and carrying out."