THE COURTS AND FREE SPEECH

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

Much as the cause of the pro-war Teach-in's speakers is indefensible on constitutional grounds as well as for the strongly ethical reasons that most students at this university cherish very deeply. I do not see that the disruption of the Teach-in can be justified in line with the traditional Supreme Court interpretation of free speech.

One argument often invoked by defenders of free speech violations is the argument that no one is entitled to use his free speech in order to yell "Fire" in a crowded theater. In B. Ko-Yung Tung's very sympathetic letter to the CRIMSON, this line of reasoning is offered as one possible defense of the pro-war Teach-in heckling. Mr. Tung writes that, since "bringing in pro-warriors to a militantly anti-war campus logically results in disruption," it was the pro-warriors themselves who provoked the disruption.

It should be noted that this same type of reasoning has been used in the past to prevent civil rights marchers from holding demonstrations because they were "provoking" right-wing extremists standing on the side-lines to acts of violence. The courts, as I understand it, have rejected this type of reasoning in the past, and they should do so in the future, as students at Harvard should.

While questions of free speech are important and should be debated in the universities, they should not, however, detract our attention from another, more important cause: ending the immoral, illegal war in Indochina and bringing peace to the long-suffering peoples of Southeast Asia.