Group Sponsors Rally, Forums To Commemorate 1969 Strike

A rally in front of Memorial Church Friday afternoon and a panel discussion in the Kennedy School of Government that night highlight the plans to commemorate the 1969 strike this weekend.

Susan Petersen '81, a member of the Ad Hoc Committee to Commemorate the 1969 Strike, said the events this weekend will try to "draw lines of continuity between student movements of 1969 and 1979."

Speakers at the Yard rally will include Michael Ansara, a former member of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS), George Wald, Higgins Professor of Biology Eneritus, Sandra Graham, a Cambridge city counselor, and professors from Boston University and the University of Massachusetts, Perry G. Merhling '81, the committee chairman, said yesterday.

The group is organizing informal discussions in dining halls Friday night with former members of SDS or the Class of '69, Merhling added.

Stanley Hoffmann, professor of Government and a leader of the liberal caucus of the Faculty in 1969, and Ernest May, professor of History and a leader of the conservative caucus, will participate in the panel discussion Friday night along with former student leaders.

The Student Advisory Committee of the Institute of Politics and WHRB will co-sponsor the discussion, entitled "April 1969: A Ten-Year Retrospective."

"We will have members of every major viewpoint that was widely known then," Merhling said.

Merhling said the committee has also planned weekend workshops and discussions about South Africa, the Nestles boycott, the J.P. Stevens boycott, Harvard's community relations, women's studies, nuclear power and Afro-American studies.