The Mail EXTREMIST THUGS?

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Friday night I attended the Counter Teach-in Sanders Theatre. There, not only our University's reputation but its ability to function as a center of free discussion, learning, teaching and research was severely damaged. Freedom of speech is perhaps our most basic liberty and constitutional right, and Friday night a determined and ultimately successful effort was made forcefully to eliminate free speech at Harvard.

There have been innumerable teach-ins, speeches, and meetings on our campus-none disrupted-opposing America's role in Vietnam. This meeting was to have presented speakers who would offer evidence and opinions supporting that role. Several hundred students turned out to hear them. Guests included an AID staffer with years of experience in Vietnam, a professor who had taught there, and Thai and Vietnamese diplomats.

Professor Cox at one point begged the disrupters to allow the speakers to be heard. Under the circumstances, he may be forgiven the lapse. We must refuse to beg for free speech at Harvard. We must insist upon it. If the Faculty fails to express its repulsion at what happened Friday night, and demand punishment of the disrupters; if the Administration fails to proceed with the punishment; and most of all if we the students fail to make clear our horror that here at Harvard men were prohibited from speaking freely, we will all share the guilt that falls on those who allow freedom to be eroded.

"Immorality" is a term used loosely these days. But surely to sit quietly by while gangs of stamping and screaming extremist thugs destroy free speech at Harvard is a moral crime.

Those who engaged in this attack on the liberties of their fellow students have no place in our community, for they subvert our one basic tenet: that freedom to think and speak the truth as we each see it is inviolate. We must demand their expulsion from our University.