Minority Opinions

( Both of the following represent the viewpoint of a minority of the members of the CRIMSON staff: For the majority opinion on the subject, see yesterday's CRIMSON.)

Serious Violation

IT IS ONLY with the greatest reluctance, with an understanding born out of sadness and pain, that we recognize the disruption of Friday night's Counter Teach-In as a serious violation of the academic freedom of this community.

The decision is a sad one because the principle at stake-the freedom for teacher and student to conduct intellectual inquiry free of external and internal controls, the University's application of the freedom of speech-has itself so often received such shabby, lip-service treatment here at Harvard. Mr. Cox has reminded us of the many controversial figures who have found lecterns open to them at Harvard, from George Wallace to Fidel Castro; but we also recall the cases, like that of Pete Seeger, where the same freedom was denied. We are reminded of the vigorous campaign that President Pusey fought to save this University from the McCarthy witchhunts; but we then recall how Pusey returned to Harvard, intent on proving that the campus could police itself to the satisfaction of its outside critics-thus making the supposed "freedom" for which he fought a spurious one. And, most recently, we have been forced to watch as the standard of "academic freedom" has been raised aloft as sufficient reason to excuse the University, as a body, from expressing its opposition to the war in Indochina, while simultaneously promising Henry Kissinger, one of the chief architects of the war policy, a welcome sanctuary when and if he should return from Washington.

And the decision is also a painful one because of our awareness of the complexity of motivation that fed into the disruptive protest Friday night. For there were some who came to Sanders convinced they were allied in battle with the oppressed people of South Vietnam, while others came, their tactics undecided, in a desperate effort to somehow express their opposition to the single issue of the war. There were those present who found the appearance of the representatives of a criminal war on a Harvard stage so outrageous that they could not contain their anger, while others took up the chants only after being baited by the obscene demagoguery of Dan Teodoru.

Few saw their action as an attack on academic freedom, here closely interwoven with freedom of speech, a freedom that in any other set of circumstances they would most surely have supported. For the questions which had filled most minds before the hour of the teach-in were those of tactics and political considerations. And, even on that matter, there was serious confusion.

AND YET, for all the sadness and pain, the decision to condemn the disruption is unavoidable. It is not enough to point to the University's past failures to live up to its ideals in order to justify our present failure to do so. And, in the final analysis, actions of this sort can not be judged on the basis of their motivation. For academic freedom is meaningless if its application is not universal. And, however much we might wish to treat the atrocity of the war in Indochina as an overriding reason for suspension of the principle, it simply can't be done. Even if we excuse the intolerance exhibited Friday night, the spectre of other men in other places at other times who, while not sharing our views, do possess a measure of the disruption's intolerance, haunts us. Ultimately we must accept the principle of academic freedom-at least as it is exhibited in the freedom of speech-if only to save ourselves from our own moral superiority-and that of others.

It would follow then that Friday night's demonstrators-both those who opposed the speakers and those who increased the turmoil by goading on the disrupters-should be appropriately disciplined. Except that other, equally disturbing spectres, haunt the execution of such a policy. The past two years have seen Harvard's failure to establish a disciplinary body that is respected by students, Faculty and Administration. The current state of disarray that characterizes the CRR makes it singularly unacceptable for the task of upholding ideals of freedom, when it itself has violated so many parallel freedoms of judicial process. If the disciplinary process upon which the Administration seems ready to embark is to follow the scenarios of the past two springs it will only further undermine faith in the University.

It is not enough to purge the disrupters. And for University administrators to spend the coming weeks screening motion picture film in an effort to establish identities and actions is equally self-destructive. Disciplinary procedures become mindless machinery when they operate in a morally bankrupt environment. The primary need of the moment is not retribution but moral leadership and development of a University-wide consensus so that the principle of free speech will not be violated in the future. Pusey, over the past two years, has consistently failed to provide such leadership. It is to be hoped that Derek Bok, even before he takes official office, will provide a rallying point around which members of the University can reaffirm their belief in free speech.

There is a final problem that the disruption raises. Calculated to intensify concern over the war, it now threatens to maroon debate on the single issue of academic freedom. Those who oppose the war can not afford to return to the old attacks on the University: As the CRIMSON argued last fall, although the University does share a certain complicity in the war, the primary task at hand is to oppose the war on a national level. Similarly, those for whom academic freedom is an equally overwhelming concern would be foolish to mistake the disruption as an internal cancer that can be isolated and destroyed. They too should make their first order of business opposition to the war, for until this secret and immoral war ends, the destructive effect it has on our national life will continue. And if this larger sickness is not cured, Harvard's private attempts to secure ideals of free speech become just a form of self-mockery; its attempts to preserve academic freedom disintegrate into a mere exercise, one that threatens to be more academic than free.