Harvard Students to Debate Soviets In April Tour of Four Russian Cities

Two Harvard undergraduates will travel to the Soviet Union next week to take part in a series of eight debates with Russian college students.

K. Brennan Klose '90 and Catherine Boyle '89 were chosen in a nationwide application process to represent the U.S. in debates in Moscow, Leningrad, Kishinev and Minsk. They will be joined on the two-week trip by a third student--a Soviet emigree who attends the University of California at Northridge.

Sponsored by the Virginia-based Speech and Communication Association (SCA), the debates have taken place every other year since 1972, according to Donald Fields, organizer of the event.

"The program was an outgrowth of Henry Kissinger's detente policies in the early 1970s," Fields said. "The goal is to open up interface between the two cultures and open up dialogue" on pressing international issues, he added.

As part of the program, the Soviet Union sends college debaters to the U.S. in the fall, and American students journey to the Soviet Union in the spring.

Unlike standard college debates in the U.S., the eight "diskussia" consist of 10-minute speeches by each of the American representatives, alternating with 10-minute addresses by three Soviet debaters. The debates will be conducted entirely in Russian.

The subject of the debates will be the proper relationship between the media and government in the modern world, Fields said.

One thing the American students will attempt to prove is that the press should have complete freedom from government control, providing there is no clear and present danger to the country, Klose said.

Using several landmark Supreme Court decisions, the Harvard students will describe freedom of the press as it works in this country, Klose said. Boyle, who concentrates in Soviet Studies, said she and her countrymen will also address the misconceptions that Soviet students have about freedom of the press here.

"I think that one of the misconceptions is that our press...is objective, and that isn't the point of the freedom of the press," Boyle said. "There will always be a bias...[but in the U.S. the guarantee of freedom] means that the public is confronted with many different biases."

Klose, who lived in Moscow with his family from 1979 to 1981, said he does not expect a warm reception from the Soviet audiences. "The Russians are very careful about greeting foreigners warmly," he said.

When Klose's sister, Cornelia K. Klose '90, participated in the debates two years ago, "they didn't believe the goodpoints" made by the Americans, he said.

The three American students will meet inWashington before leaving for the Soviet Union sothey can compile their independent research andget briefings from the Soviet Embassy, accordingto Northern Illinois University Professor M. JackParker, who will serve as coach and escort for thestudents