The Mail NO PUNISHMENT

To the Editors of the CRIMSON:

The University is currently preparing to punish certain students, faculty members, and other employees who prevented representatives of the Thai and Saigon governments and the White House, and a Brande's war-"researcher," from defending, before a Harvard audience, for the benefit of government cameras, the conduct of the Southeast Asian war. Those who disrupted the meeting acted on the view, which the presence of the USIA cameras in Sanders Theatre vindicated, that the meeting was to be used by the government for propaganda purposes in attempting to maintain an atmosphere here and abroad in which it can continue to prosecute the war. Those who took the action thought it essential to show students and others around the country and the world who are rightly working to stop the Southeast Asian war altogether, that their views are shared at Harvard. At other universities (the University of Illinois at Urbana is the most recent example) since then, other similar government-orchestrated sessions have been prevented from taking place. The Harvard administration's response has been to take the action entirely out of this context and to simply cite violations of the freedoms of students to invite and hear speakers, and speakers to be heard, in the University. Opinions reasonably differ on the question whether either of these freedoms was, given the situation, wrongly abridged by the protesters; but the intentions of the disrupters and the political context cited above are crucially relevant to any reasonable attempt to assess the rights and wrongs of the matter. Some of us believe that other factors as well, or instead, must be taken into account. Some of us believe that the action at Sanders Theatre was fully justified; others do not. But all of us believe that the nature of the case is such that any punishment by the University of these involved would be unacceptable.