650 Demonstrators in England Prevent Lecture by Huntington

Six hundred and fifty antiwar demonstrators last month prevented Samuel P. Huntington, professor of Government, from presenting a lecture at Sussex University in Britain, the London Sunday Times reported two weeks ago.

An antiwar group at the university, the Sussex Indo-China Solidarity Committee (SISC), conducted a two-month campaign against Huntington's appearance which culminated in a showdown outside a lecture hall at the school.

Five hundred people waited inside the hall and another 150 demonstrators circled outside the building at the time Huntington was scheduled to speak on the role of the military in American foreign policy. Seeing the way barred, Huntington left with two Sussex faculty members without attempting to give his lecture. The Times reported in its June 17 edition.

Huntington, presently a visiting fellow at All Souls College, Oxford, could not be reached for comment yesterday.

During the campaign, SISC had charged Huntington with complicity in the American Vietnam policy. Citing an article he published in the July 1968 edition of Foreign Affairs magazine, the antiwar group claimed he had advocated extensive bombing of rural Vietnam to drive people into the cities and eliminate the social base for the revolution in the countryside.

SISC leaders described Huntington's policy as advising that "the way to win the war is to bomb the countryside out of existence," The Times reported.

The newspaper quoted Sue Hacker, an SISC leader, as saying," A man who has been responsible for such policy statements cannot come to a university purely as an academic. He is entitled to as much freedom of speech as he allowed the Vietnamese."

On several occasions, Huntington has denied that his article, which was a condensation of a classified report he submitted to the State Department, had any effect on American policy.

In a January 31, 1972 letter to The Crimson, for example, Huntington explained, "I could hardly have suggested this [the forced urbanization] be done; it had all been accomplished long before I began thinking about Vietnam on behalf of the United States government.