South African Diplomat Won't Testify to CRR

A South African diplomat whose visit to Harvard in May sparked an anti-apartheid demonstration-turned-scuffle said yesterday he would decline a Harvard invitation to recount the incident before the faculty committee charged with disciplining the protesters.

Professor of Astronomy Owen J. Gingerich, a member of the disciplinary Committee on Rights and Responsibilities (CRR), said the committee will send the diplomat a letter within two weeks asking him to describe the protest, in which about 200 students blocked his exist from the Lowell House Junior Common Room after he had addressed members of the Harvard Conservative Club.

New York City Consul General for South Africa Abe S. Hoppenstein said he will neither appear before nor send written testimony to the CRR because he does not "want to get involved in domestic matters."

Hoppenstein said, however, that he feels Harvard administrators and police handled the incident "properly," despite protesters' charges that police officers were unnecessarily violent when they escorted Hoppenstein through the human blockade.

About 20 students involved have filed charges of police

brutality with a special University committee. At least two students--but not Hoppenstein--were injured in the fray.

Marathon

In marathon sessions last month the committee heard preliminary testimony from Harvard administrators and other witnesses to determine the general chain of events. When it next convenes in September the CRR will attempt to resolve some of the smaller discrepancies between the various accounts, said CRR chairman Richard E. Kronauer.

The committee will also ask students to appear for individual hearings, but it is unclear how many will comply. In the first round of hearings last month, all but one of the 14 protesters charged in the incident boycotted the hearings, saying the committee is "illegitimate" and was created to stifle political dissent.

No Testimony

Hoppenstein said he is confident that the CRR can reach a fair verdict without his testimony. He added that his account would agree with previously published accounts of the incident.

He refused to say whether the committee had been in contact with him about the incident.

Calling the blockade "an unpleasant event not becoming Harvard," Hoppenstein said he is "disturbed that students should be able to determine who speaks on campus."

The diplomat denied charges that the Conservative Club had provoked protesters by engaging him in a speech to which they were not invited. "I'm certain if protesters hadn't tried to bar my entry the leadership of the Conservative Club would have admitted them," the diplomat said.

"The protesters came not to listen but to wreak havoc," Hoppenstein added. "I would have gladly heard them and fielded their questions."

Hoppenstein, who had come to Harvard to speak in a Kennedy School forum that included a representative of the anti-apartheid African National Congress, said "if protesters had taken the trouble they could've heard [both speeches]" the night before Hoppenstein spoke at Lowell House.

Despite the blockade, however, Hoppenstein said his "respect and regard for Harvard is in no way diminshed." He added that he seeks "no retribution" for the May 2 protest.

Dormant Body

The CRR, a Vietnam War-era disciplinary body that had Jain Jorman since 1975, was revived at the height of campus anti-apartheid protests across the country this spring to hear the cases of some 18 students involved in both the Lowell House blockade and another earlier anti-apartheid sit-in at the office of Harvard's governing boards.

Although students are intended to constitute half of the 13-member committee, they boycotted the CRR almost since its inception in 1969 until 1980, when the College stopped inviting them to serve. Students then and now have charged that the committee can punish student protesters for political dissent without appeal to a higher body.

House committees again refused to send student delegates this spring because the committee was revived too late in the year for them to consider perennial questions of its legitimacy.

The committee is not expected to reach a verdict in either incident until late September, despite early hopes that it could finish before Harvard's June 6 Commencement. The diplomas of three seniors charged are being withheld pending the CRR's decision.RICHARD E. KRONAUER: Chairman of the CRR