Huntington, Etc.

To the Editors of The Crimson:

The Ad Hoc Committee to Protest the Return to Harvard of Professor Samuel Huntington presents an interesting case in misguided energy and effort. This Ad Hoc Committee feels that Huntington should not be allowed to return to this campus because of his role as a Vietnam War hawk in government.

This attitude presents incredible arrogance in associating Harvard with goodness, and other universities with less beneficence or value. For the fact is that if Huntington were denied the right to teach here, he would undoubtedly turn to "lesser" schools for employment, probably in the South or West, where other hawks such as Rostow and Rusk teach. So, what difference does it make if we deny him tenure? The difference is significant only if we assume that Harvard has more value or prestige than "lesser" schools, and that thus his punishment would be a "step down."

The most rational way of solving the "Huntington problem" would be to allow him to teach here, but for his students to challenge his theories and lectures in class, thus revealing to him to mistaken basis of his thought, which inevitably led us into Vietnam. However, undergraduates at this university seem quite docile in class, from what I have observed. They rarely challenge any professor's 'party line' lectures, as they are scared and too concerned about grades and getting into law or business or medical school. Thus, the Ad Hoc's flashy tactics are really a way of conveniently avoiding a head-on clash with Huntington's view.

If anyone really believes that Huntington, et. al., were "wrong" in encouraging U.S. destruction in Vietnam, it should be obvious that that caricature of a "war" was the inevitable result of political-economic theories and values which Huntington and scores of other professors here believe in and regularly dish out as gospel truth in classes every day, unchallenged by students. Such professors' inability to see that socialism has a fundamental and genuine appeal to oppressed peoples everywhere, and that privilege and wealth are detested by the poor, blinds them to the essential justness of "revolutionary" movements in the Third World. It is this fundamental fact which should be insisted upon by us inside hawks' classes here. You should get inside the class, not stand outside the building.

But this is perhaps too much to expect of a student body which basically comes from inherited wealth and privilege. Tokenism of the Ad Hoc Committee's brand is enough to alleviate their sense of guilt and outrage, by projecting their class's values and crimes onto scapegoats such as Huntington. But tokenism is politically worthless. Those who do not challenge evil values in class will never significantly protest evil actions of their government and their corporations, 20 years from now. It's too cozy to sit on Wall Street with a fat salary, so why risk your job by challenging official acts of injustice then, when you won't even risk a silly grade in order to protest this now?

So just sit back with your dates and your beer on Saturday nights, and go on making token protests when it's fashionable to do so. But please, don't pretend that you are trying to prevent future Vietnams and punish perpetrators of the old Vietnams. "Physician, heal thyself." Stanley G. Hilton   B-School '79