For The Boycott

To the Editors of The Crimson:

I am outraged by the letter to The Crimson, signed by several teaching fellows in the Department of Government, which criticized the recent boycott.

There are valid distinctions between a discussion and a boycott. The purpose of discussion is to exchange views and information. They purpose of a boycott is to achieve change.

It is the duty of students to strive for change when they feel that strong moral issues are at stake, even though their efforts are ineffectual. Students may have an impact on the fate of the Afro-American Department. Their ability to achieve divestiture is much more tenuous, but nonetheless their effort is worthwhile. There has already been much discussion, with no results. The time is ripe for action.

To boycott for divestiture is more than a cathartic exercise on a spring day. Divestiture would help black South Africans. Even a symbolic gesture by Harvard University would have impact on other groups and on government policy. It is naive, if not paternalistic, to expect corporations to help blacks, as, apparently, President Bok and some of the teaching fellows do. It is as naive to expect that anyone in the U.S. will provide arms to the blacks (this would, of course, be more effective than divestiture), as other signatories of this letter do. Divestiture is the only sort of pressure that can be sustained on a large scale and would have tremendous impact. It is well known that countries do succumb to such pressures. The best argument for divestiture is the support for economic sanctions that is given by black South Africans abroad and by liberal white South Africans, like Donald Woods.

Of those teaching fellows who argue that divestiture is insufficient, I ask: when has any revolution, however bloody or peaceful, begun with a claim for complete relief? The Brown decision, twenty five years old on May 17 of this year, surely did not end segregation or discrimination in our schools or in the rest of the country. It was a puny step, but a step in the right direction, a moral act. It led to an end of the most virulent segregation, and paved the way for other civil rights decisions. When Nixon was first attacked for Watergate, who expected him to fall to such ignominy? Who expected Ian Smith to share anything with blacks? All change is slow. Revolutions begin with baby steps.

To some of the teaching fellows, the cry for divestiture is juvenile self-indulgence. Perhaps they are tired, or their study of Government leads them to despair of all change. Perhaps the conservative Government Department has socialized them. In any event, they appear to lack a social conscience. It is shameful and sad that teachers of political science at one of the most prestigious Americun universities seem to have lost respect for fundamental American political values: freedom to protest against injustice, equality for all races, democratic decision-making, and social activism. How can such teachers do justice to the American Revolution, to Abraham Lincoln, to the Brown decision.

I agree with the idea that diversity and intellectual challenge should be the hallmarks of a university, that all opinions should flourish on their merits, and that all ethnic, racial, and other groups should be tolerated. But these ideals do not justify blindness to South African racism. Furthermore, intellectual diversity does not preclude a boycott. A boycott effectively presents a viewpoint, opens up discussion, and permits the examination of divestiture on its own merits.

It is peculiar that in the name of diversity and intellectual freedom the teaching fellows have objected to the idealism of students. It is my fervent hope that these teachers of American political theory will not silence the politics of morality in the student body. Lena Zezulin '76   Resident tutor, Mather House