Adams House Symposium To Recall 'Reds' John Reed

Although many Harvard students may not notice the portrait of John Reed '10 hanging in the Adams House Dining Hall as they eat their eggplant parmesan, he will be the subject of a symposium there this Thursday at 8 p.m.

The event will celebrate the 100th anniversary of the birth of the famed journalist who covered both the Mexican Revolution and the 1917 Russian Revolution. Reed died in the Soviet Union in 1920 and is the only American buried in the Kremlin.

Scheduled speakers include Reed's biographer Robert Rosenstone and Canadian writer David Lawson, who will recite several of Reed's poems. Reed's grandniece Susan Reed, a writer for People Magazine, is also scheduled to participate.

The free symposium will be "a memorial, a rememberance of John Reed," said Thomas Ferrick, Harvard's humanist chaplain, who is coordinating the event.

John Reed is "a symbol of good relations between the United States and the Soviet Union [who] represents the friendly face of America" to the Soviet poeple. Ferrick said.

"I wouldn't be suprised if some Marxists or revolutionaries from the old days showed up," he added.

Reed, the subject of the movie "Reds," wrote the book "Ten Days that Shook the World," which Corliss Lamont '24 described as "the recognized eyewitness account of the Russian Revolution." Lamont, coordinator of the 16-member John Reed Centenary Committee, will serve as moderator of the symposium.

Despite Reed's leftist politics, Lamont said the celebration would have "a non-partisan approach" and would not be geared toward any one political party or philosophy.

In conjunction with the symposium. Houghton Library will present an exhibition of Reed's poems beginning October 22.