Rolling Stone
Senator Frank Church said of him "Where others have used the language as a weapon, he has employed it as an obstacle to evil. He was the Russian of our Napoleonic phase." Others acclaimed him for his clear reporting, and his straight-to-the-heart analysis. He used his reporting for political goals. He warned of the dangers of McCarthyism when it was just starting to froth up. He began a written and spoken resistance to the Vietnam War long before doing so was fashionable. He has attacked the arms race, the rise of government power, and the politician's principle that nations come ahead of people.
He is I. F. Stone. Grabbing his first reporting job at age 14, Stone devoted a lifetime to the profession, working at one time or another for The New York Post, the New York Star, the New York Daily Compass, the Philadelphia Record and the Philadelphia Inquirer. But Stone's crowning glory came with his publication of the I. F. Stone Weekly, a Washington newsletter accenting political topics.
If Stone can speak as well as he can write, he's worth hearing. He'll present "A Maverick's View of Washington Politics," this Sunday at the Ford Hall Forum, in Alumni Auditorium at Northeastern, 360 Huntington Ave. in Boston. Stone will speak at 8 p.m. The doors open to members at 7, and to the public, who will be admitted free if seats remain after members have entered, at 7:45.
Elsewhere on the circuit:
FRIDAY, OCTOBER 28
A series of films about photography will be screened at 8 p.m. in the MIT Creative Photography Lab, on the third floor of the MIT Armory, on Mass. Ave. near the main building. The films are: The Weapons of Gordon Parks, EI Mojado, by Danny Lyon, Weegee's New York, and Black Has Always Been Beautiful, a film about the work of James Van Der Zee's, a turn-of-the-century black photographer in Harlem, N.Y. A one dollar donation is requested.
SATURDAY, OCTOBER 29
A benefit for the movement to protect whales and dolphins will feature two films at the Orson Welles Cinema at noon. Greenpeace: Voyages to Save the Dolphins is a documentary on some of the ecologists who try to stop the killing of marine animals by harassing Soviet whaling fleets. These guys are dedicated: during some of their forays, they maneuver their small boats so as to interpose themselves between the whaling ships and the whales, and stand there while explosive harpoons aimed at the whales whiz past their heads. They lecture the crews of the ships in Russian in an attempt to persuade them of the wrongfulness of their acts. But with little success: in one case a captain ordered the crew to drag through the ice-cold water an ecologist who had grabbed onto the cable the whaler was using to haul a whale up to the boat. "Voyages" was filmed along the Northern California coast and on the North Pacific. Last Days of the Dolphin, the second film, is narrated by Dick Cavett.
Admission to the show, which will be repeated on Sunday, is $2. Proceeds will be shared with the Greenpeace Foundation, an environmental organization, and with Greenpeace Films Productions.
An all-day conference on "Blacks and the American Political Process" will feature 15 academics, politicians, journalists and others. Among those participating will be Kenneth A. Gibson, mayor of Newark, N.J., J. Anthony Lukas, newspaperman and author, and Martin Kilson, professor of Government. Panel discussions start at 10 a.m. in the Science Center.
SUNDAY, OCTOBER 30
Rev. Donald G. Lothrop will detail 30 years of government spying on his activities in the peace and civil rights movements in a lecture at the Morse Auditorium, 602 Commonwealth Ave. in Boston at 11 a.m. The lecture will be entitled "What the FBI Had on Me."
MONDAY, OCTOBER 31
William E. Colby, CIA director under Nixon, will speak about "Modern Intelligence and Information" in room 231 of the Aiken Computation Lab from 4 to 5:30 p.m.
TUESDAY, NOVEMBER 1
Cheryl Walker, an assistant professor at Scripps College in Claremont, California, will lecture on "American Women Poets: A Room of their Own" in the Colloquium Room on the first floor of Agassiz House in Radcliffe Yard at 3:30 p.m. Walker is now working on a book on American women poets, volume she hopes will detail the social influences on women poets and examine their lives and poetry closely. Her lecture will focus on a theme that has fascinated women poets for years: the sanctuary. Walker will discuss Emily Dickinson, Sara Teasdale, Elinor Wylie and Sylvia Plath.
Lester Thurow, an MIT economist, will discuss "The Current Economic Predicament" at 8:30 p.m. in Emerson 305. If Thurow's name rings a bell, you may have taken Ec 10. Thurow was the one who talked about "job competition"--a scenario where jobs search for workers--as opposed to the standard theory of "wage competition" in which workers run around looking for jobs. Thurow's theory has numerous applications in the study of black-white income disparities, and explaining in general why some people have more money than others. This last is a topic that Thurow examined in his most recent book, "Generating Inequality: Mechanisms of Distribution in the U.S. Economy."
The Biblical Rationale for the Commandments will be discussed by Jon Levenson, assistant professor of Religion and Biblical Studies at Wellesley, at 8 p.m. in Science Center A.
Composer Aron Copland and pianist Leo Smit will discuss the music they will play in concert on Wednesday night at a "Learning from Performers" lecture in the Kirkland Junior Common Room at 4 p.m. The lecture is free, but tickets are required and can be obtained at the Holyoke Center Ticket Office starting today.
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 2
"U.S. Nuclear Nonproliferation Policy" will be the topic of a discussion by Joseph Nye, Deputy to the Undersecretary of State for Security Assistance, Science and Technology. Nye will speak in Seminar Room 1 in the Center for International Affairs at 4 p.m.
"Successful Motivation of Ghetto Students" will be discussed by Samuel Woodward, professor at Howard University, in the Fredrick Douglass Room, on the ground floor of 77 Dunster Street at 7:30 p.m.