Learn from a Mistake

LET IT NOT be said that Harvard never admits mistakes.

Two weeks ago, on the eve of spring break, the University announced the cancellation of its South Africa Internship Program after the program drew harsh criticism from student anti-apartheid activists, was attacked at a faculty meeting and was denounced by several Black political and religious leaders in South Africa.

University Vice-President and General Counsel Daniel Steiner '54 returned from a fact-finding mission to South Africa, claiming that Blacks in that country wanted Harvard interns. But in the face of subsequent denunciations of the program by Bishop Desmond M. Tutu and other South African leaders and vocal oppostion from several faculty members as well as students, the committee charged with administering the internships voted to cancel the program. In the context of Harvard bureaucracy at least, they moved with an alacrity that deserves commendation.

The committee's retreat was an extraordinary move for Harvard. Especially on issues relating to South Africa, the University has forged ahead with controversial policies in spite of criticism from many of the same students, faculty and public figures that attacked the internship program. Not since student and faculty protest forced ROTC off campus in 1969 has the Harvard Administration backed down from such a public challenge.

In announcing the decision not to send interns, Bok said, "I hope I always will have the kind of Administration that can learn from experience." We should take him at his word. But if he really takes the lessons of the stillborn internship program to heart, there should be some significant changes in the way Harvard does business.

The contention on which the internship program rose and fell was that it represented what Black South Africans wanted us to do to help them. The University has also made this claim about its refusal to divest from corporations doing business in South Africa. In both cases, the claim is specious.

Having recognized the political ramifications of education in South Africa the University should realize that involvement in that country, whether through students or investments, can not be neutral. Harvard has to pick sides and the choice is obvious. The first step is admitting that the University's over $400 million of investments in companies that do business in South Africa is at least as politically objectionable as the ill-fated internships.

What so inscensed Bishop Tutu about Harvard's ostensibly philanthropic desire to send interns to his country was the arrogant and paternalistic way in which Harvard conceived and established the program without regard for the views or concerns of those the program was supposedly designed to help. It is the same paternalism that bolsters Harvard's decision not to divest. And instead of helping Black South Africans in a way that many of them have requested, the University decided it knew better. It didn't, and it doesn't.

Harvard can still learn from its mistake--first, by divesting as soon as possible, and second by working with South Africans to match the good intentions of the University's $1 million fund with the desires of its putative beneficiaries.