Mindlessly Besotted

DESPITE EDWIN MEESE III's absence tomorrow, by all indications the attorney general will grace the Harvard campus sometime this spring to pick up an award for distinguished public service from the Kennedy School of Government as part of its 50th anniversary celebration. It seems ironic that Meese would want to pick up an award from a school named for the President and attorney general who pioneered interpretations of the Constitution which Meese now attacks. But here he comes, and we wish he wouldn't, ever.

Neither Meese nor the K-School, it appears, is willing to forego the opportunity to adorn themselves with status names and medals. For while Meese recently announced that he had important cabinet business keeping him from making his scheduled appearance tomorrow, he did not say that he would decline the award. His reception has merely been pushed to May 20 on a flimsy excuse; Meese will be in town this weekend. The postponement is surely an effort to let the controversy die down, and the rescheduling seems supiciously timed to coincide with exams and thus cut down on the number of protestors.

We hope the controversy won't die down.

For those who dislike the Meese record on Constitutional interpretation, Dean of the K-School, Graham T. Allison '62's announcement of the award came as a shock and an unwelcome surprise. But it's been done; the award has been offered. And unless the K-School and Allison are willing to gravely affront the Reagan Administration, the award will likely fall into Meese's hands in May, while protesters picket outside and distinguished professors either boycott the ceremony or voice questions about the Attorney General's competence.

Most recently about half of the professors at the Law School signed a petition questioning the justification for the award. The litany of Meese malarky is long: his suggestion that abortion rights be revoked, that Miranda rights aren't that important, that the states should not be held accountable for the Bill of Rights and finally that the original intent of the Contitutional framers should guide all court decisions. A prolonged Senate confirmation hearing called into question Meese's personal ethics, and while no charges were pressed, Meese is no clean, shining example of integrity in public office.

In watching the gaffes and errors committed by the K-School along the winding road to the award, we can't help but wonder just what they are teaching at the school. First, the medal was awarded without proper consultation with the committee in charge of the awards. Then, recoiling from the barrage of criticism, a K-School spokesman proposed that the medal be regarded as a "party-favor," a kind-of door prize for attending the K-School's birthday party. But most clearly, the medal was awarded with little or no thought about the merit of the recipient. Indeed this honor seems an egregious, blatant example of tawdry pandering to national politicians. And the person to blame is Allison, a special Department of Defense consultant, who, it seems, wanted to score more points with the Administration. Of course the K-School is enamored of power, but we had hoped, not mindlessly besotted.

Right now it seems clear that Meese and the award givers at the K-School are on a collision course with a large portion of the Harvard community, including K-School students and graduates who have petitioned and called for recision of the award. But recision is not the solution; it would only compound the huge public relations fracture. It's asking too much for the K-School to swallow its pride and also shoot itself in the chest in its relations with the Administration. Two solutions present themselves. Meese took the first step in damage control by postponing his appearance. That gives the K-School time to graciously forget that they ever offered the award or to rename the award. A nice innocuous title that still impresses Administration types would be in order: the Kennedy School of Government's Commemorative, Special Edition, Super Duper 50th Anniversary Medal. The other option is really very simple. While we would really love to see Meese speak and be questioned by some sharp law professors, he could do his buddy Allison a favor and not come at all.

Dissenting Opinion

IT'S EASY TO MAKE fun of Ed Meese. Even his name is funny. And his record as Attorney General and advisor to the President has been controversial, to say the least.

But it is a fact that judgements of Ed Meese's accomplishments and competence have always been, and continue to be, uniformly subjective. For every legal expert and politician who has condemned Ed Meese another has lauded him. No recognized institution, legal or political, has found enough "dirt" on the man to take any action against him. And charges levelled so confidently against him of "incompetence" are ridiculous: After graduating from Yale Law School Meese both practiced and taught law for many years, neither of which can be said of Robert F. Kennedy '48.

American law is inherently a fluid canon, and rightly so. The "legal establishment" which ridicules Meese so thoroughly today was a tiny minority at one time, and no doubt will one day be so again. It is simply not true to say that Meese has committed some sort of outrageous heresy against fundamental, cast-in-stone legal precepts. Meese, like any active and important leader in American legal matters, simply has a strong point of view (one incidentally shared by many thousands of lawyers, politicians and judges). That he happens to hold a profoundly conservative bias apparently miffs some Harvard law professors and Kennedy School students but should not deter Dean Allison from giving Meese a small token of recognition for his years of fighting for his beliefs and for coming to speak.

Harvard is rapidly, and deservedly, losing any reputation it ever may have had for accommodation of diverse points of view. Everything from blockades of United Nations delegates to the hurling of water balloons at Cabinet members have occurred here in the 1980s. It is not "tawdry pandering" to acknowledge with small tokens of esteem the visits of high Administration officials in return for their time and contribution to the range and volume of intellectual debate on campus. Such gestures simply provide a less-than-perfect means of counteracting the very real hostility and aggression of a small and vocal minority of students and faculty against the current Administration.

Every time Harvard-affiliated groups insult prominent Americans they detract from the University's ability to influence the political evolution of the United States. Maybe Meese, like his boss, should simply snub Harvard and refuse to come on May 20th. He would then join in the slow but sure removal of Harvard from the crucial political debates of our time.