Boot 'em

To the Editors of The Crimson:

This is to comment on the report in The Crimson (May 13) about the Ad Board's decision to discipline 14 students for disrupting the speech of a South African diplomat last March. It struck me as unfortunate, though not surprising, that the only criticisms of the Ad Board's decision your reporter was able to find in the Harvard community were from those who thought the punishment of probation too harsh rather than too feeble. The sad fact is that free speech at Harvard has been dying for some time and that this latest Ad Board ruling is further evidence that the administration is simply unwilling to do anything effective to defend it.

That Harvard is mostly a liberal place, and that it provides a home for many leftists and radicals, is not in itself objectionable. What is objectionable is the increasing willingness of the Harvard community to allow and excuse a tyrannical intolerance on the part of some of its members. Free speech or free discussion in the university is in no sense a peripheral or secondary matter. The university is neither a church nor a political party, and those who would turn it into one simply do not belong here. Freedom of speech and discussion is the core of the university, and those who knowingly attack it commit an offense more serious than pyromania or even plagiarism. The only reasonable penalty is separation from the university. It is utterly ridiculous that members of the Harvard community who have willfully violated the free speech of others dare to whine about their own right of free speech when caught and charged with doing so; and it is almost obscene that they attempt to clothe themselves with the dignity of civil disobedience, even though their words and actions have been anything but civil, even though they deny any authority to try them, and even though they would gladly evade suffering even the slightest penalty.

Still more disturbing is that these debased arguments in defense of the protestors inexcusable tactics find a sympathetic ear among many members of the faculty and administration, who are therefore reluctant to punish them. This is what accounts for the fact that it has for some time been impossible to penalize this kind of behavior with anything like the degree of severity that it deserves and that would be necessary to deter it. If the penalty were losing one's Harvard degree, one can be sure there would be very few if any martyrs willing to pay such a price, and respect for free speech here would be virtually universal. As it is, violations are commonplace because the penalties imposed are hardly worth mentioning. Time will tell; but does anyone really believe that the punishment just imposed--probation until October 15--will seriously intimidate even the offenders themselves (how much trouble can they get into in the last two weeks of this term and the first three weeks of next?), much less deter others from following their example? If this is a measure of how seriously the Harvard authorities regard violations of free speech, it might be better to do nothing at all. Far from discouraging anyone, this is almost an incitement. Wanna be able to snow you did something for The Movement? Blockade a speaker and Harvard will provide you with free documentary proof, suitable for framing. It's hard to say which is sillier, the belief that this constitutes effective punishment, or the fear of the Ad Board minority that it was too brutal. It would seem from this farcical episode that Harvard's authorities are divided between those who think it is wrong to defend free speech effectively and those who think it is wrong to defend free speech at all.

In recent weeks Harvard has been treated to the spectacle of a "law" professor proclaiming that he would have trouble condemning someone who assassinated speakers whose political views the professor judged unacceptable. It is perhaps inevitable that academic freedom protects even this degree of zaniness, but it would be a tragedy if there came to be a time when only the crazed or fanatical were protected. Yet that is the danger we approach as year after year the violations of free speech accumulate uncorrected, as it becomes ever more clear that unpopular speakers at Harvard can expect to be harassed and intimidated, and that the university will neither seriously discipline the perpetrators nor invite the silenced speakers back. If students on the Right were to take a cue from students on the Left and, on the grounds that Professor Kennedy's recent remarks were offenseive and insensitive, were to disrupt his lectures or blockade him in his classroom or office, or pelt him with vegetables, there can be little doubt that the university would rush to his defense, and rightly so, in the name of academic freedom. Indeed, last year's incident at Dartmouth shows that when right-wing students dare to copy the tactics of the Left, university officials may come down upon them with the wrath of God. But since, as it happens, today's brownshirts are not on the Right but on the Left, since they mouth humanitarian slogans, and since their victims are those for whom the faculty, given its political leanings, feels little or no sympathy, the university is basically paralyzed, unable with any good conscience to confront them. One can't help wondering whether Dean Epps' charges against the protestors were dismissed because they lacked merit or because the university lacked spine. That the protestors continue to act with such impudence and impunity, despite the university's warnings, shows how much they despise it. They are evidently persuaded that the administration is bluffing and lacks the courage of its proclaimed convictions; and, alas, the administration continually proves them right. Though university officials bravely tilt at distant windmills like the Moral Majority and Accuracy in Acadmia, they are curiously meek when it comes to the barbarian within. Their pious hand-wringing and declarations of high moral principle are unfortunately just puffed-up cowardice. With such sterling examples of character to inspire them, it's little wonder that a few students decide to behave like hoodlums. John Harper   GSAS, Department of Government