The Divestiture Fast

To the Editors of The Crimson:

To our knowledge the divestiture fast announced in Monday's Crimson is the first time the fast has been used as a political instrument by Harvard students. The signers of this letter would like to express solidarity with those conducting the divestiture fast.

As a political tactic the fast is neither well studied nor fully understood. There are some things we do know about it, however. First, a political fast represents a unique and courageous assumption by an individual of the price of political activism, a kind of paring down of obligation from the wider membership of an organization to the single person, creating a situation where, so to speak, "the-buck-stops-at-me." As such the political fast is an awesome burden--one that runs the risk of grievous if not ultimate injury to the fasting individual. It is precisely this heavy burden that lends the act of political fasting its special aura--a profoundly self-denying and self-sacrificial aura that, under certain circumstances, has the capacity to cut across the conflicting boundaries of the fasters and their opponents in unique ways, forging solutions not merely pragmatic but also moral-enhancing.

Connected to this is the special chemistry between political opponents that is created by political fasting, especially the emergence of sympathy between the fasters and opposition owing to the self-denying aura surrounding the former. This is, of course, precisely what the political fasters seek.

There is, however, always the chance that the faster's opponents will not enter the special relationship of discourse created by the fast, thereby presenting the fasters with the horrible choice of ending the fast or risking death or at least serious physical injury. It is in the hope of avoiding this terrible choice that we express our solidarity with the divestiture fast. We urge the Harvard administration (President Derek Bok and Fellows of the Corporation) to search its soul for that inspiration this would allow it to run a risk no less than that of the divestiture fasters. This risk relates to the possible loss of profits from lucrative investments in South Africa. The Harvard administration also risks the loss of friends among the American power elites who, through either outright sympathy with South Africa's fascist and racist ways or just plain callous indifference, will sever connections with a Harvard that risks some of its wealth in order to save its soul. We will forever be ashamed of a Harvard that defines its self-interest so callously that it is incapable of matching the moral threat of divestiture fasters. Rita Breen. Executive Officer Committee on African Studies   Martin Kison, Professer of Government   Robert A. Levine. Professor of Education and Human Development   Orinade Patterson, Professor of Sociology   Nancy Schmidt, Associate in African Ethnology, Peabody Museum