Bok and South Africa

To the Editors of the Crimson:

In what must be one of the most sycophantic articles I have seen in any time at Harvard, ("Behind the Mass Hall Mystique: A Closer Look at President Bok," Crimson, January 10). President Bok is quoted as saying, "I'm sure that I've spent many more hours on South Africa than any of those people who are criticizing me for it [not divesting]." I grant that he has spent more time than any individual student at Harvard, but his campus critics are not alone. We are attempting to support the struggle for human dignity in South Africa as the leaders of that struggle have informed us we should. Does President Bok think he has spent more time thinking abouth South Africa than Stephen Biko and Bishop Luthuli did in their whole lifetimes? Does he think he has more experience in the matter than Bishop Tutu, who last month said in Memorial Church that investing in torture and the wholesale destruction of black family life? Are we to believe that if Nelson Mandela, the leader of the African National Congress who has been imprisoned on an island for twenty years, would just take a break from the rockpile and think as much as Derek Bok has about South Africa, the ANC would stop demanding that Harvard divest? These are Bok's critics: the imprisoned leader of South Africa's main resistance organization, two Nobel prize-holding Episcopal Bishops, and the murdered founder of Black Consciousness is South Africa. They certainly know more than he does, and in a university, when someone knows more than you do, you listen to them. Damon A. Silvers '86   Southern Africa Solidarity Committee